Dual Monitor Video Card Problem?

[Ben]

Oh bum. Conversation last night:

"Do you want to upgrade your computer?"
"No, I'm really happy with how it's running just now."

This morning, literally BANG. I thought it was just a loud pop through the speakers on the iPod docking station, then it occured to me that wasn't even plugged in - must have been from the PC, even though nothing strange appeared to happen. 

Five minutes later - Blue Screen and something about "graphic drivers couldn't be restarted." 

This is the strange thing - I can get into Windows Safe Mode fine on both screen and ports, I can load up and use a Linux LiveCD without any bother - but try to get into Windows7 and it just crashes, either BSOD, massive flickring/pixelation or just black (monitors stay live.)

I've updated the graphic drivers in safe mode, but to no effect. The only slight notice I can see is some random pixels flickring over the icons on the left-hand side of the monitor, but that only lasts for 30/40 seconds and is very slight. Tried a couple of W7 test, memory test seems fine.

I run a dual monitor setup, 1920x1080 on a GeForce 8600 GT graphics card, it's a dual-core custom-built machine - so I'm buggered to know what to do next. I wondered if it might be dust that's shorted something - so I've cleaned it out, wasn't too bad

[Dud]

Had the same kind of issue with an old old card, worked fine in safe mode, updated drivers etc to no avail. Just would not work in windows. New card sorted it!

[Stealth]

The drivers initialize the most advanced options in a graphics card- which seems to be where the death occurred. In safe mode, or other OS's where the card is configured to use the basic resolution and no advanced graphics it will work fine. Remember windows vista & 7 now use advanced graphics rendering for aero effects, so your card is being used heavily just for the desktop.

[Ben]

Cheers Stealth, looks like you are spot on. I replaced the card (finally) today - and two of the big thing transistor-looking things have blown open. New card = all working perfectly. 

[Ben]

 

[Stealth]

Nice! I remember replacing 400 dell computers with burst capacitors in a week!

[Ben]

So they are capacitors? That's handy to know rather than trying to explain them

[robwhizz]

Nice! I remember replacing 400 dell computers with burst capacitors in a week!

Did the burst capacitors perform better than the Dells? Did nobody notice their PC missing?   

[Rosco]

which one's the flux capacitor?

[Stealth]

Its when there were hundreds of thousands of dell's shipped with capacitors that blew prematurely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

We had 2 dell engineers from Poland helping, so i suppose i didnt do them all myself but it was a quick 15 minute mainboard swap!