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Corrupted video during POST screen and Windows XP - replaced CMOS battery - no luck
Hello all,
I have an older XPS Dimension Gen 2 with an ATI Radeon 9800XT stock. This past Friday night, I noticed that when booting up the POST screen video was corrupted with strange characters, colors and lines. I am running XP Pro SP3 and the logo screen was completely corrupted with lines and corrupted colors. Additionally, when everything is loaded windows displayed corrupted pixels and lines. Opening up MS Word and typing different sized text altered the video corruption. Moving an open folder across the screen is slow with extreme lag as if there is a problem with the frame rate. I believe there was a power spike as my router coincidently died the next am. All components are connected to a surge protector but I am thinking it didn't do the job. I had also experienced the "Alert! System Voltage is low..." and thought it was a bad CMOS battery causing the corruption. I replaced the CMOS battery and while the error message disappeared, the video corruption has not. I've reflashed the system bios, updated ATI drivers and removed and cleaned the AGP card. Perhaps the video card is faulty and fried. On a cold boot the POST screen displays correctly but Windows does not. If I reboot, the POST screen gets corrupted. Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Adam
TheRealFireblad
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April 8th, 2009 06:00
It's rather stating the obvious - I know, but the signs aren't good Adam :emotion-6:
Since you can still boot the system, it's unlikely to be the motherboard?
And given the various problems you've described, it does sound as if the power surge has fried your graphics card :emotion-43:.
Do you have - or can you borrow another [known working] card to try though?
That would be the easiest way to confirm it?
Sterndogg02
88 Posts
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April 8th, 2009 08:00
Thanks for your help and reinforcing my suspicion as well. I'm hoping it is the graphics card and not the mobo. Obviously, the system boots up without error codes and all PCI cards are functional so hopefully it's isolated to the AGP card. I pulled the card after the system was on for only five minutes and it was extremely hot - perhaps it's overheating. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare AGP card at work or home so will order a new one and hope I can keep this beast alive for another year or two.
Best,
Adam