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Looking for input on my PC.
21 October 2020 | by
Today I started my PC and was greeted with the above screen......I did restart and all was ok but I was wanting to hear some of my readers wisdom as to what this could but and more importantly is it a sign of worse things to come?
PC information is as follows:
OS is Win 7 64 bit
The processor is AMD FX-8320 3.5 GHz
Ram 8 GB
Graphics card Nvidia Geforce GT 730
14 Responses to “Looking for input on my PC.”
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Looks like a driver glitch. If it doesn’t repeat I wouldn’t worry about it. If it does recur, first step on most any graphics issue is to try updating the drivers, or going back a version if they were recently updated. If its too scrambled to do so, you can try a safe boot by holding down left shift or tapping F8 during boot. If it is still there on a safe boot, I’d reseat the card, but I think that’s pretty unlikely here. Feel free to email me if it comes back, but I tend to skip a day or two between email checks :).
Good evening Frosty and thanks for the reply, tomorrow I will check to make sure I am up to date with the drivers. If not I will update them but first I will back things up just in case the update ends up causing me more issues.
Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Mike
VE9KK
I’d say your video card is probably on its way out.
Since Windoz 10 did another update this past week, it could be a driver problem. That said I have had a monitor do what happened to you a few years ago. Lost sync… That said I am putting my money on the driver since Microsoft seems to be the ones always screwing around with drivers
73 to you and yours
Harry K7ZOV
“OS is Win 7 64 bit”
1) So much for the driver updates issue. Likely you haven’t received a driver update in years. I would suspect, as another commenter mentioned, that the graphics card could be having an issue. Depending on when you last opened the case and cleaned out the dust bunnies you might want to clean it and remove/clean/re-seat all plug-in cards and cables.
2) Unless you have the latest and greatest router with up-to-date software and the firewall immaculately configured, you could be a sitting duck for software compromise. Get a new PC with Windows 10 and move your data to it, since the disk drive on an old PC is more unstable every day that goes by and they fail with little to no warning. Everything has an MTBF.
Good luck!
Mark KJ4NXX
Good evening Trevor and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, today I checked the video card website for the most recent driver. My driver was out of date, so I downloaded and installed the new driver and I will see if that does the trick. So far so good but we will see over time.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Good evening Harry hope all is well for you and your family? I have Win7 on my PC still. I did have Win10 but it kept monkeying around with my sound card settings. It made using FT8 a real pain and as you said when Windows do an update things seem to happen. I opted out of Win10 and when back down to Win7. In time, I am going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade to Windows 10. I did update the video driver and will see if that does the trick.
73 Harry and all the best,
Mike
VE9KK
Good evening Mark and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, regarding your first comment. I had the PC apart about 3 months ago and did clean out the CPU fan and cooling fins along with the graphics card. One thing I did not do was to remove and reseat the card and double-check the cable connections. I also updated the driver software for the video card today as well.
Regarding your second point our modem is owned by the cable company we have, and I am told it is up to day regarding firmware, software and I did along with their online tech support set up the firewall. But having said that the cable company can tell me what ever they want. Regarding the hardware I replaced the hard drives a few years ago with WD black drives. I did go to the WD site today and downloaded their drive troubleshooting software and both drives passed without issue. I am hoping the software update to the video card will do the trick for now.
I have been off and on looking at a new updated PC but that is on the back burner with all the other expenses that have to be addressed first.
Have a great what is left of the week,
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Mike, for what’s it’s worth I’d put my money on the graphics card and/or cable needing reseating. Failing that, it could be that the graphics card itself is on the fritz. They are not too expensive to replace.
73
Colin
GM4JPZ
Good afternoon Colin, I updated the graphics card drivers yesterday and I hope that does the trick. If not then it’s time to haul out the tower and check the card physically.
Thanks for the comment and have a great weekend,
73,
Mike
Hi Mike , May I suggest that your forthcoming New Year’s resolution will be to change your PC’s operating system to Linux (Ubuntu ? ,Linux Mint? )
I am sure you will find it refreshingly free …….regular updates …..no driver hassle.
73 Frank , EI7KS also (still) GM0CSZ and KN6WH.
Good morning Frank very nice to hear from you and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, in the past I had been using Ubuntu on a laptop. You have a very valid point and for sure it does problem free. The only issue that drove me back to Windows was the non-support for the ham radio programs I run. Mind you it was over 12 years ago that I was running Ubuntu and things may have changed now. I did use Wine but it was glitchy and did not support some programs I wanted to run. The radio programs that I run are Win4icom, JTXD, WSJTX and N3FJP logging software. If you could update me regarding ham programs and Linux that would be great!
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Looks like a driver problem. Depending on your video card (or the built-in video set), the driver may have glitched. I’ve ran into this with Windows, Macs, and Linux machines. Be sure to update the driver for the video at least twice a year.
Ubuntu is terrible with Ham programs. Never figured why they had so much trouble. I’ve had to ask people on the forums for help, and with some distros you can get great help to correct the problems. Just make sure your drivers are updated for your computer setup.
Good morning Moe and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, as said in an earlier comment I did have Ubuntu installed on a laptop but really not for ham radio. I do agree that there really is not much out there other than Windows that supports the ham programs that I use often. Mac does have some, but they too don’t support (other than through Wine that can also be glitchy) most of the programs I use very often.
Have a great weekend Moe, and I was reading your QRZ page, welcome to ham radio!
73 and have a great weekend,
Mike
VE9KK