Medion Desktop failure

Cardew

Wasn’t certain what to call this thread, but I am hoping that somebody can shed any light on this fault.

I have a Medion Desktop PC that is 3+ years old, running MS XP, and just out of warranty.

Today whilst working it suddenly packed in. The symptoms varied. Firstly a blue screen saying that it had been shut down because of a problem with File ati2dvag.

Eventually I got it started again in Safe mode and did a system restore. However it still kept giving me the same blue screen, then started switching off during the start up procedure.

Now it won’t switch on at all – completely dead! Obviously I have checked that 240v is present. I have checked inside and there is no sign of a reset button or fuse.

So my question! From those very sketchy details can anyone venture a guess on the area of the fault?

On the face of things it would appear to be a power supply problem. But would a fault on the power supply bring up the dreaded blue screen and allow me initially to get into safe mode?

A secondary question, assuming my PC will be following Bill Gates into retirement, is there any way to get all my data from my old hard drive onto my new PC? I have a lot of stuff backed up, but I had intended to do some more back ups soon!!!!

espresso

A quick google reveals that you are not the only one with this ati2dvag problem. Try re-installing the video driver first. see here for more info. See if you can get it up and running again before resorting to question two.

Cardew

Thanks espresso, that describes exactly the symptoms I was getting.

The usual symptoms of the ati2dvag problem are:

• PC crashes without warning, sometimes the display shows weird patterns before the crash.
• Resolution may revert to the lowest resolution settings upon restarting your PC.
• The CPU temperature may shoot up prior to crashing.
• PC may not be able to reboot back after the crash, unless you turn off the power supply unit of your PC and switch it back on again.
• Your PC tells you (sometimes only) that the ati2dvag driver has failed to function.

The trouble is that it now wont switch on at all, and I did notice that the PC seem very warm.

Looks like it might have fried my power supply?

mdbarber

check the cpu heatsink isn't clogged with dust will get hot and cause all sortsa random faults
may also have corrupted the bios not allowing you to boot, reset via procedure in manual

Cardew

I did hoover our all the dust when I had off the side panel. There was quite a bit, but I have seen worse.

Interestingly in one of the links that espresso gave, the guy said removing all the dust from the video card solved his problem.

As stated above I now cannot get the PC to switch on at all, it is completely dead.

Is there any sort of reset button or fuse for the power supply? I couldn't see one.

Woby_Tide

assuming it isn't the disk that has gone then yes you should be able to whack it into any new PC and just read it like any normal disk to get whatever you need off it

espresso

Have you tried again today when it's cold? See if you can boot into safe mode and remove the video driver.

mdbarber

If you are lucky, the over heating has corrupted the bios.
To reset this disconnect the two power chords running from psu to mainboard, pull out the 2032 coin battery and leave for 5 mins.
Doing this it's best to remove any usb devices attached as they can transfer residual power up the bus on some main boards.

Cardew

mdbarber wrote: »

If you are lucky, the over heating has corrupted the bios.
To reset this disconnect the two power chords running from psu to mainboard, pull out the 2032 coin battery and leave for 5 mins.
Doing this it's best to remove any usb devices attached as they can transfer residual power up the bus on some main boards.

Thanks for your help guys, carried out all the steps as above to no avail; it is completely dead.

Its getting above my pay grade now.

espresso

Cardew wrote: »

Thanks for your help guys, carried out all the steps as above to no avail; it is completely dead.

Its getting above my pay grade now.

If it's completely dead - no output from the PSU, they can be had for less than a tenner e.g. here. Very easy to replace, see here.

vyseyboy

A dead video card can cause the machine to not boot at all.

Maybe the card overheated, causing problems at first, before completely and irreversably suffering heat damage?

I'd look at borrowing a video card and swapping it out with the current one for testing. (any old PCI or AGP replacement - probably AGP.)

I think some of the higher end medion PC's from a few years ago came with AGP ATI Radeon 9800's, which had a fan which was prone to failure. Those cards throw out a fair bit of heat at the best of times.