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OK. Upon booting my home PC this morning, I was greeted by the normal sights and sounds, up through the screen where the windows logo appears, but when it got past that it just displayed a lot of white lines, no image, but I heard the windows chime. My gut feeling is GPU but I wanted to double check if something else would do that before I spend money on a new GPU. Anything else a likely culprit for that?

Sounds like a GPU...had something similar happen to my GTX 460 a few months after getting it. Fortunately it was still under Zotac warranty, so they replaced it without issue.

Best check is to either toss in another GPU or connect to another screen (assuming that you aren't already using 2 monitors). If it's not the GPU, it's probably the display itself, so switching one should check both.

The monitor worked fine at a friends house so that's *probably* not the problem.
It did eventually boot but went down again *shrug*. Oh well.

GPU seems to be the most likely culprit, but it could be almost anything. PSU, motherboard, RAM are all possibilities too.

You're going to have to find it by process of elimination - either swap in known good components one by one, or test your components in another system.

Yikes :X I don't have spare components for everything. that may be time for a trip to the local shop *sigh*
Really hope it isn't a mobo, as I'm on a phenom X 4 II and I'm not sure if a new motherboard would be cost effective, but I can't afford to replace the whole thing.

paulWTAMU wrote:

Yikes :X I don't have spare components for everything. that may be time for a trip to the local shop *sigh*
Really hope it isn't a mobo, as I'm on a phenom X 4 II and I'm not sure if a new motherboard would be cost effective, but I can't afford to replace the whole thing.

Well, like I said GPU seems the most likely, I would start there.

Is this an AM2+ or AM3 motherboard? (And if it is AM2+, is your Phenom II one of the "normal" ones that can also run on AM3 or is it one of the oddball ones that is limited to AM2+?)

I'd honestly have to run CPU Z and check what it is It's been so stable and adequate for so long I've pretty much not thought about it in over a year.

Probably the GPU

However, if you haven't done so already, I'd recommend taking out the GPU, cleaning the contacts carefully with some isopropyl (high % rubbing) alcohol and reseating in the PCIe slot. Also, if your board has a second PCIe slot, I would try it in there.

There's a small chance it could be ram (so you can try reseating that too and trying with one stick at a time) or PSU (If for some reason the PCIe connector isn't providing adequate current/voltage) but unlikely. Edit: And I guess it could always be the motherboard -as in failed PCIe slot...

The best would be if you had another system to try the GPU in to rule out for sure.

I'm taking it apart today and cleaning and reseating everything to double check. That'll be this evening though. I'll hope it helps

Check the GPU fan while you're in there. It may have frozen up and the white lines were an overheat glitch.

that would explain the little pinging i'm hearing

well crap. I replaced the GPU with a loaner but I'm still getting odd issues--audio is unrelaible (I use integrated), inputs are iffy (mouse and keyboard are both having issues and they're both pretty new)...gaaah I'm thinking my motherboard is wonky

Run a RAM diagnostic, and if you can get a loaner PSU try that. Might as well try the easier things first.

Also grab your flashlight and inspect the motherboard for bulging caps.

no bulging caps...I tried to use metest, but it requires making a bootable CD and my optical drive failed a long time ago Any other good ones?

Memtest86+ has a USB thumbdrive bootable version.

well, replacing the loander GPU with another one fixed a lot of the odd problems, but with both loaners, I still experienced the monitor flaking out. I'm going to go get one Friday and see if that fixes it. When the monitor goes like that, and this is a brain dead should have seen it sooner thing, I can't access the monitor menu (color adjustments and stuff) which makes me think it's the damn monitor.

paulWTAMU wrote:

well crap. I replaced the GPU with a loaner but I'm still getting odd issues--audio is unrelaible (I use integrated), inputs are iffy (mouse and keyboard are both having issues and they're both pretty new)...gaaah I'm thinking my motherboard is wonky

I'm thinking it's your PSU. I have had to replace several over the years and it's weird how they cause a whole bunch of problems that never seem related. Random shutdowns, weird colors on the screen, mouse lockups, etc. They seem to be the only part that just... goes bad after a while.