I think my hardware is messed up any programs that can detect it?

barnak

Newcomer
For some reason my computer boots up and all the letters on the bios and boot screen are all distorted with differnet colors and weird characters like smile faces and @. They move around and change as well. I was able to get into windows and safemode and I tried to update my bios but windows would not detect the chipset now and the drivers wont install. Windows and safemode are extremely slow win you go in and the color continues to be messed up on the screen as well. I ran the memory test and my Ram passed all of them. But im sure i have hardware problem I just dont know which one it would be. I dont have any spare parts to toss around to test so if there was anything I could do to pin point to that hardware I can RMA it and replace it with a warranty. I have had most of the hardware since october and just got the graphic card about 2 weeks ago

Btw my specs are

Asus a8n Sli deluxe

Amd x2 4800 +

Evga 7800 gtx 512 Mb

2 ocz platnium ram

seagate 250 gb HDD


Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
 
This happened to me (the BIOS smiley faces, mostly purple or was it pink) and as far as I can tell it was a dead video card. After swapping out the video card all was fine again. My 6800 Ultra died and I popped in a GF4 :)shock:), so, potentially, it could also have been power related as the GF4 draws much less power. I have been too lazy (and angry at the failure of my 6800 right as warranty expired) to explore the problem further. As far as I am concerned it was just a video card gone bad.

By the looks of things, your video card cannot possibly be out of warranty so RMA it. :smile:

PS. Wait for a second and third opinion before taking my advice. ;)
 
Hmm very intresting. I actually hope it is the graphic card if anything, I think that will be the easiest to RMA since I just got it.

But yea forgot to add i got a Enermax 475 true wattage PSU

btw Thanks for reply. I hope more people have suggestions or comments about it.
 
Assuming you still have the warrenty.. an RMA is the best idea.

Though.. with how limited in supply the 7800 GTX 512MB is.. I'm not sure you will get one back (I presume they keep just enough for RMA purposes of course)... but you might get an upgrade (a 7900?) in return...

Those descriptions are the sign of a bad video card.
 
Lol I could only hope they would upgrade me to the 7900. But yea it was a pretty crazy situation. I first thought it was a mobo or bios problem. But if its the card it would be a much easier situation.
 
Well it turns out part of the issue was the graphic card. I switched with my bros x800 and it fixed the dissorted colors and characters issues. But now the computer still runs extremely slow and takes forever to boot up. And windows is really slow as well. If you have any suggestions, I would be greatful! Thanks.
 
bad parts can lead to other bad parts, but usually it's the motherboard. the most common thing to damage the mobo is the PSU, so i'd check and see if any of your friends have a high-quality PSU you can borrow. but regardless, if your mobo got damaged you could see all kinds of slowness (bad chips or bad memory)... :/ sadly the mobo is SUCH a pain to diagnose. any of your friends run the same platform as you? ^^;; sometimes in a case like that I'd buy a new mobo, test it, and then resell it if it turned out I didn't need it. might waste ~$10, but cheaper than having a repairman do the same thing ;)
 
many A8Ns had terrible problems with Northbridge fans failing causing overheating and random crap performance or total system instability. No recall was issued, customers were not notified. You can contact Asus via email and hopefully they'll get back to you in a week or you can buy a new one if that turns out to be your problem.

i swore to never buy another asus product after that fun time. If you can get into the bios make sure nothing is over 40C in the temperature readings with the exception of the CPU, you can also look to see if the fan is doing anything anymore.
 
It's either the PSU or some cooling problem, be it CPU, chipset or the gfx-card. You can look at the mobo voltages and fan speeds with the tool you got on the mobo CD (Asus Probe), if there are too many fluctuations the thing is clear. Otherwise, I'd check out the CPU cooler and the GFX power cord.
 
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