The Computer Headache

[nivek_hcerg]

Hi Guys!

It's been a long time since I last visited these forums so if you don't wanna help I don't mind .

Problem: a couple of days ago, my PC started crashing during games, switching to something similar to a low power state. When rebooting, windows would tell me the NVIDIA driver stopped working.

2 days later, the problem got so serious that now I can't even boot into windows completely (and neither boot mandriva). The BIOS post sometimes fails(~80% of the time) or misbehaves (beeps as if it's all A-OK but is not).
I got only a P5KPL board (no integrated VGA for testing :[ )


My Conclusion: Since the computer is now 4 years old, with less than a year old: PSU and a GT240, I suspect that my motherboard is dying/dead and searching for a new replacement that accomodates my GT240.

Is anyone in disagreement to my conclusion and solution or perhaps wants to give his/her own suggestion/opinion?

Thanks.

[A Guy]

If you can't, have a friend burn a live boot linux CD. If you can boot to the CD and everything works fine, it is not hardware related. If however, your problems persists, you would need to do hardware testing. Assuming it is the oldest hardware may turn out to be correct, but is by no means assured. If you have more than 1 dimm of ram, you can try booting with just 1 stick. If that fails, try the other stick. If it fails with both (or all) alone, then it's likely not ram. Of course, having another GPU to test with could also confirm it's not the GT240. I am not a hardware expert, and have never had to troubleshoot my own PC failing (knock wood). I'm sure a more experienced member will have other ideas. Good luck. A Guy

[nivek_hcerg]

Thanks for your reply A Guy.
In response to your post, it's definitely a hardware issue. Now I have less chance to get the PC to boot (It even fails to boot into mandriva [linux] if it gets through the post. Most of the time it just loses the vga signal and the system sits in a sort of dead state doing nothing (just fans and HDD whirring)

Unfortunately I don't have a working PCI or PCI-E vga card to test with.

As for the RAM, when I got the chance to boot the system I did a memory test on a module for a couple of minutes and it came out clean so I left that only in the case. That's why I came to this conclusion.

Thanks again.