YAGCD

[TehDruid]

Yet Another Graphics Card Dead (I guess?)

So about 15 hours ago my computer started out of nowhere to freeze while doing nothing at all, most of the time accompanied by a white/black/alternating black & white stripes screen. I happen to have Ubuntu installed so I tried working with that for a while to figure out if I had a virus or anything but nooo, Ubuntu crashed out of nowhere too while I had a Firefox window open. I used windows safe mode and that worked, even though once while trying to log with safe mode it froze even before the windows logo while loading the necessary drivers, so I disabled the graphics card finally and I haven't had a crash yet for a while now. At least I can use my computer for some basic functions, like composing documents and browsing the net. Only problem is my computer doesn't have an alternative low-power card so windows is using the vgasafe thing which is obviously bad if you want to game at all. I can't play Tiles, even Minesweeper is lagging ffs because it uses hardware acceleration. So I figured I should play some ASCII games until I buy a new graphics card... Which I don't know when it's going to happen.

Have you guys had any similar situations happen during your gaming life?

[Hopeless]

Ouch. Only similar in the sense that I have had tons of machines that were quickly outclassed and obsoleted and unusable to play the latest crop of games. :/

[TehDruid]

Well my previous computer was a desktop-replacement laptop with 2 graphic cards, one for gaming, one for energy saving. And after about 9 months of buying it, the gaming card started crashing so I resorted to using the integrated intel card which was like 64 mb. I could play even League of Legends just fine after a specific driver update they released, but in this situation I can't do that. Oh welp.

[Kaeoschassis]

Yeah I cooked a graphics card on my old gaming rig - still haven't replaced it, actually. The fun story about that particular pc is it was the first one my father and I built together, and unbeknownst to us, the company we ordered the parts from sent us the wrong memory. Sooo we cooked the cpu. And ordered a replacement. And cooked that too.
I have pretty bad luck with computers.

I also had an entire box of cds/dvds stop working all at once, and I still haven't even figured that one out...

Can you tell why I play so much crawl yet?

[TehDruid]

I opened the case of my tower and there was a lot of dust in there... I blew it out and so far Ubuntu seems to be working fine. I even tried a few flash games and a game on steam to test the graphics card for crashing and nothing bad happened. Windows on the other hand, I can't get to boot with the card... So I'm stuck with Ubuntu apparently. Oh well, I'm compiling trunk atm.

[Kaeoschassis]

Now that's seriously weird. It's got to be something software-side in that case, right? But I honestly have absolutely no idea what would cause it while still allowing it to work with ubuntu...

At least you can game again! Somewhat!

[TehDruid]

Well there is one thing. When I shut down the computer last night from Ubuntu, I heard the hard disk go silent, but the screen remained turned on displaying the Ubuntu shut down screen and all three internal fans kept working. Had to shut it down by the 3-sec power button press. Oh welp. At least it looks like I can play tiles at my normal speed.

[Hopeless]

Well there is one thing. When I shut down the computer last night from Ubuntu, I heard the hard disk go silent, but the screen remained turned on displaying the Ubuntu shut down screen and all three internal fans kept working. Had to shut it down by the 3-sec power button press. Oh welp. At least it looks like I can play tiles at my normal speed.

SO is it an overheating problem??

[TehDruid]

That's highly improbable, since I've had it happen right after starting the computer, not while running any demanding software, if that's what you're thinking. I'm starting to think it may be something different though.

I made a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04 on my computer today, and the only one problem I 've had so far is when I had launched Flare (a small game sort of like diablo in alpha) and was downloading an update to steam at the same time. While I was barely at the character creation screen (before even playing) the computer kind of shut down. I mean, I'm pretty sure I heard the hard drive go silent. The screen went black but the computer was still on, fans all working, etc. It was as if it went into sleep mode or something. The keyboard didn't seem to do anything so again had to hard-reset.

[damiac]

That really sounds like overheating. Maybe the temp sensor/switch is faulty?

I know some devices (like X-boxes) do something very similar on overheat. They shut themselves off, but leave the fan running until the temp comes down.

Also, if your heat transfer paste dried up or whatever, maybe you really are just overheating that fast. Previous overheats could have caused damage.

Just a guess from your description.

[tasonir]

My mac laptop will keep spinning the fans after you put it to sleep, but generally only for about 15-30 seconds. Just to take the edge off? Dunno - the thing's generally about 10 million degrees, I wouldn't mind if kept spinning them for a few minutes longer.

I'm not sure how much I trust the sensors on it, but when I was briefly mining dogecoins, the temp monitor I was using was reporting 100-105 degrees Celsius. I really didn't want to start boiling water with my laptop, so I didn't mine much dogecoins after a day or two.

I actually have the laptop propped up on a small box to raise it off my desk when I'm docked, for better airflow. It still gets quite hot, I think macs are just known to run pretty hot though.

[TehDruid]

I don't understand what's going on but I re installed windows 7 and the computer seems to be working fine. I've ran minecraft for several hours since I did that and nothing happened. I don't want to jinx it but it seems to be going well. Lol. Played some Crawl too, today.