Computer Problems

GWC Community GWC Hive Mind
#1

I had to unplug my computer earlier tonight because of some severe weather rolling through. I ended up unplugging it before it shut down all the way, and when I restarted it, it was mirroring the same stuff on both of my monitors and popping up the “Found New Hardware” dialog for lots of “PCI devices”.

I looked at my Device Manager, and it said that my graphics card “Can’t find enough free resources that it can use”

While I am a computer person, I work pretty much exclusively on the software side of things, so I have no idea what could cause this or how to solve it.

Help me hive mind, you’re my only hope.

EDIT: Something else I just noticed is that when I’m scrolling up and down, the refresh is very noticeable.

EDIT 2: Forgot to mention that I tried reinstalling the graphics card driver twice (once a straight reinstall, another as an uninstall followed by a reinstall).

#2

What OS? Have you tried powering off and back on again?

#3

Windows XP

And yes, between my own restarts and ones triggered by the driver uninstall/reinstalls, I’ve restarted more in the past hour and a half than I do in most weeks :stuck_out_tongue:

#4

And here’s what my device manager looks like. I’ve made it so that only the parts that seem to have the problems are shown, but I still needed to stitch two screenshots together.

#5

Ooof! I’m at a loss on this now.

#6

Isn’t this where you say, “Reinstall Windows?” (I’m a Mac guy, myself.)

#7

If you have System Restore on, then maybe you could try that. But I’m thinking it’s an actual hardware problem and not the drivers. Is the graphics integrated on the motherboard?

#8

I thought about that. Thing is, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find my reimage CD. I looked through my CD stack and saw the CDs for the monitor that came with the computer and the office suite that came with it, but no Windows one.

I’ve moved twice since I got this computer, so the Windows CD might be somewhere else, but I think I did a pretty good job of keeping all the computer stuff together.

#9

No, I got a new graphics card about a year ago. I think it’s in a PCI slot.

It looks like System Restore is on, so I’ll give that a shot.

Maybe something didn’t get cleaned up properly when I pulled the plug before it was all the way shut down and that screwed things up.

#10

Ok, then first I’d try moving it to a different PCI slot and see if it works.

If not, do you still have your old card? If yes, then try re-installing it to see if it works.

#11

No joy on the System Restore.

The old one is on the mother board. I’m not sure if it’s the card itself though, since it is still sending to both monitors, even if it is sending the same thing to both.

#12

Bummer. :frowning: Are both graphics adapters enabled cause I only see one in your list?

#13

Both monitors are on the ATI card. I’m not sure what happened to the old one on the overview.

#14

Have you tried a good ole CHKDSK? One of the reasons that it’s a no-no for pulling the plug is because of those pesky mechanical moving parts. Without electricity, there’s no safety mechanism to keep those read heads from crashing into that 7,500 or 10,000 rpm hard disk of yours… if it was performing any drive operations when you pulled the plug. You could have any number of files - drivers/swap files/directory structure - damaged.

Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve played with XP, although I did play with it a lot. Try running CHKDSK /f (I think that’s the flag for a full scan) before the OS fully loads. You might be able to do that from Windows Explorer requiring a restart, or you can try hitting the F8 key on boot up right before it says ‘Loading Windows’ and choose the Command Line Interface. Or there’s always Repair Mode when booting from the Windows CD, although that can be less than intuitive when getting into it.

After you’re sure your hard drive is in working condition, try loading your drivers again, starting with your motherboard/chipset drivers if you have them.

#15

I would shutdown and pull the ATI card, plug one of the monitors to the integrated video and see what happens. If the start up find the old video and everything come up normal then the problem was the ATI card…if not it may be the motherboard has a problem.

#16

Not entirely true. If the card has a 6 or 8 pin power connection, the problem could be the power supply. Looking at the device manager screen shots it looks like a problem with motherboard or the system drivers.

A couple of questions pop to mind.
How old is the system?

Is this a home build PC or did you buy it prebuilt and upgraded the vid card?

If home built, what is the make and model of the motherboard and vid card?

If pre built, have you checked their forums for the same problem?

When was the last time it was cleaned out?

Does the vid card have a fan on the heat sink and does it start up when you turn the system on?

#17

I had thought about the power supply since he did pull the plug during a lightening storm. Just trying to suggest steps eliminating one item at a time starting with the graphics card since that’s what is having problems in the device manager.

#18

It was in the process of shutting down at the time, but I’ll give CHKDSK a shot when I get home.

Can’t answer all but it’s a Dell that is a bit over 3.5 years old.

I’ve never reimaged it, but I did clean out the hard drive a bit and defrag a few weeks ago.

Don’t think the vid card has a fan.

#19

chkdsk didn’t find anything. Next thing to try is opening the computer up, but that’ll probably be a couple days. I don’t want to close Rodney up in his room or shut myself up in mine to keep him out of the way while I open the computer because he spent at least part of the day trapped in my shower stall, then tomorrow I have Scouts, so I won’t really have time (Rather than driving 6 miles home with the gridlock, then past work to get to scouts, I just work a 9.5-10 hour day).

#20

Finally got around to opening the computer up today. First off, I was wrong, the graphics card did have a fan.

Taking it out, blowing the dust off it, and puting it back in seems to have done the trick. My guess (based on nothing but idle speculation) is that the graphics card didn’t get shut down cleanly and unhooking it reset it.

That also took care of all the unrecognized PCI stuff.