Is my graphics card on the way out?

pappa_golf

its a download that you used to put on a bootable floppy disk and boot from


check if there is an onboard VGA first and go from there

psychic_teabag

Sorry, I assumed you'd just google for it...

You can grab the free version from
http://memtest86.com/download.htm
and then write to either cdrom or usb stick, and then boot from that.

It's a long time since I've actually downloaded it myself, so I don't know what the new versions are like.

psychic_teabag

Is your machine failing to boot into windows at all now ? Wasn't clear from the original post whether the failure to boot was just once after one of the random crashes, or if the machine is unstartable (which obviously means you'd have to get someone else to create the memtester image for you).

Another experiment you could try is to boot from a windows installation disk, if you have one lying around. Obviously not to actually install anything, just to see what hardware it detects, etc. I'm assuming that all that could would be very conservative initially about what hardware resources are available, so it wouldn't try anything "complicated".

Clearly some things are displaying, such as bios screen and logos and things, so the video hardware must be working at some level. I guess there must be mode switches and things that happen after bootloader kicks in.

mwddrwg

Switched on the tower about 6pm and it's now not showing up anything at all, not even the BIOS screen. The fans are working and the hard drive is making normal noises like it's doing something but no joy. Monitor has a green light so assuming it has a VGA signal but still a blank screen. Going to leave it on for a bit to see what happens.

pappa_golf

is there an onboard vid card? , any beeps or noises?

mwddrwg

Update! Swapped the monitor for an old HP 17" one I had spare and it worked straight away! Turns out the graphics card wanted to install an update so I let it do this. The old Viewsonic flat panel might still work but not tried that yet. Will roll with the old HP one and gives me an excuse to get the 24" panel I've been on about for so long

Thanks to all for your help

prowla

Windows 10 and Safe Mode - now that's one to try!