Fixing a dead video card

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are there any mr/mrs fixits out there? just wondering, how do you diagnose a problem with a video card? ie, ive got a shot video card (came home one day and it just refused to work, no post, just mobo beeping telling me the card is dead), how do you tell which part of the video card is busted? and is this kind of stuff fixable??

and yeah, my blasted creative annihilator 2 decided it wanted to stop working... sigh

thanks,
mephist


- Noone listens until you make a mistake
 
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Are you sure it's not a Motherboard problem?

IT Tip of the Month:"C:\>ipconfig /all >>C:\Ip.txt" Look in root for txt file.
 
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its definitely not my mobo, ive got work's GTS in my mobo and it works fine... brought the Annihilator over to work to test out and i never get to post. dont know whats wrong with it and would really like to know how it can die while not running :/

- Noone listens until you make a mistake
 
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You dont have many options here. Hehe I know how you feel my Geforce 256 just started to die. Generally a triple beep at post indicates that the board does not detect a working video card. Rarely is it the board that ceases to function. In fact if it was the board you probably wouldnt get the triple beep. Try cleaning the connectors of your card with rubbing alcohol. Be careful when you do this. Do not leave any filaments from your cleaning cloth on the card. So do try to use a lint free cloth. Also leave the card sit for at least 5 minutes prior to plugging it back in. This gives the alcohol time to dissapate completely and helps prevents shorts. I know alcohol dissapates fast but it pays to play it safe. I say to clean it becuase if you ever touched the connectors (the gold things on the card) with your fingers you could have left oils on them. Sometimes these oils prevent the mobo from reading the card and thus it fails the test. I have seen this happen many times before. Also if there are any loose connectors on the card thats a sure sign its busted...forget trying to fix those. You really need to know what you are doing to get those fixed.

If cleaning doesnt help there isnt much left to do. You are getting a triple beep...which means the card fails to respond to the board. Likely culprits are many things on these boards. Your power supply (on the vid card) could have died. Also a simple circuit could have failed due to heat buildup...in which case its dead for good. Easy thing to do is buy a new card. Heck some of the new GF4s sell for just over 100 bucks.
 
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sigh.... ill go try cleaning the contact points when i get home. but i dont think thats the problem as the card was working the night before, then after roughly 18 hours later when i turn it on the mobo gives me the beeps :/

isnt there any way at all to stuff around with the card? err soldering of some sort or whatever? hahahahah.... any enthusiast out there who can do miracles? well since the card is f**ked i wouldnt mind taking the hacksaw out to try n fix it lol....

sigh... new video card it is then...

- Noone listens until you make a mistake
 

Kidane

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Jan 3, 2002
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Well, if you're an electrician, you can get a multimeter and test all the components on the board. You can't, of course, test the GPU itself, but you can test the capacitors + resistors. I doubt a capacitor just broke though, but maybe one fell off. I know it sounds weird, but I've had that happen to me. Look for a little metal brown thing in your case or mobo. The problem is, if that is the case, there's not much you can do about it. It looks like it's time to buy a new video card.

Hope this helps.

Kidane



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