Dots during POST Boot up

[nocturnae]

Hello,

I'm coming here for somewhat of a second opinion of the issue I'm having with my pc. I'm actually thinking I might've just wrecked my Nvidia xfx 8800gt card last week, but I'm seeking a more experienced judgement.

As a lot of gamers this month, I've entered the BF3 (closed) beta. And the first thing I've noticed is that it wouldn't work on windows XP. So I've upgraded my OS to windows 7 Home premium. Anywayz, all went well the first few days.

But due to a lot of issues with the BF3 beta, I decided to upgrade my corsair xms 4x 512mb ram to a budget friendly 2x2gb of Corsair value ram. With these upgrades I hoped to be able to play BF3 somewhat better. But that didn't really help. My 2nd step was to OC my xfx 8800gt a bit. I didn't do to much, maybe added just a mere 3% increase with the aid of riva tuner. This seemed to help my performance a bit withing bf3 and other games.
(I paid close attention to the temp of my GPU which didn't come higher then 67° C during bf3 'stress').

So I thought all was well and was a happy gamer.

Unfortunately, last friday I appeared to get some red Dots during POST & during the loading of windows. (see image below)

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/192/img0221az.jpg/

Once I was in the Windows environment however, none of those dots seamed to appear. And I thought it was just a glitch of sorts. Since I had to flash the BIOS with the newest version of my MB to get that 4gb of ram properly acknowledged by the BIOS.
But since it was fine in Windows, I thought it wouldn't be a big deal and I didn't really pay attention to it anymore. But when I wanted to play some games my pc got stuck, and wouldn't even ctrl + alt + del anymore... So I had to reset it.

When it booted up again, I would get into windows but it either would block completely (visually that is - led indicators did everything okay and whatnot)

or would just give me a black screen when it is supposed to be in Windows.

Safe mode however would work...

Now I thought, maybe xp would fix it all again. And I reinstalled windows XP. however during install all the numbers and letter's seemed like the 'ink' was flowing outside of the borders (don't know how to describe it otherwise). But when XP was fully installed, the video seemed to work fine (apart from the still recurring dots during POST & windows startup). When I tried to install the latest (non-beta) nvidia drivers though and rebooted, i've gotten the black screen all over again (now combined with the dot's motive like in the image, only green).

Is my card fully trashbin ready? Or is there an other piece of hardware/ software that might screw things over?

Any advice is more then welcome!

 

[wa1]

I think your card is dying...
But to be sure, try other card first, if it works normal then I guess it's true your 8800GT is dying.

 

[bucknutty]

The card needs to be replaced.

I have 2 8800gt and 1 8800gts like that. When the cards over heat they expand and contract when they cool causing the tiny little solder points to break.

You can try to bake the card in the oven at 390 for 10 minutes. This allows the solder to melt and reflow over the cracks and breaks. Check out youtube videos of people doing it. I did it and the cards started to work again for a while. But all 3 failed again in less than a year.

Tiger direct has a gts250 which would be a little bit of an upgrade for like $75.

 

[bucknutty]

There are tons of videos like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eofk822WgRY

Just for fun i tried to bake other computer components and none of them started to work again.....go figure.

 

[nocturnae]

Thanks for the reply's so far I think I will see if I can lend a gpu from someone to check if it's only that part acting up.

And maybe try to bake it... is 390 in fahrenheit or celcius?

Did you get full functionality back with baking it? or not?

 

[bucknutty]

Best bet is to try that card in another computer, and see if you can use another card in yours. This will help you nail down the issue.

The baking thing is a little nuts but it seems to work.
Thats 390 F or 199C. I dont think a home oven can go to 390c. That would be crazy hot.

All 3 of the video card worked great for while. But one by one they died again. One last 6 months, and 2 last about a year. I have yet to try baking them again.

 

[nocturnae]

I will try it out tomorrow, was planning on buying a new gaming rig around january anyway, hopefully with the ivy bridge around that period. But won't be able to wait that long if my gpu is busted now

 

[nocturnae]

apparantly it worked! At least for now Hopefully this will give me time to save up enough money to buy a system without having to cut some edges to save money

Thanks for the video's & reply's Bucknutty!

 

[bucknutty]

hahaha... I love when hightech problems have a low tech solution.