Having trouble upgrading a video card

  • Thread starter Thread starter friesian
  • Start date Start date
F

friesian

I have known for awhile that my video card was dying. The fan quit
months ago, and the motherboard would beep if I watched a video or
scrolled a lot. For the last month or so, the computer started
crashing, and would take multiple tries to boot up. Then it died
completely. The computer would "run", make a few normal clicks and
beeps, but nothing ever came up on the screen.

So, I got a new (used) video card. It goes into a slot and hooks up to
two power plugs for hard drives. I have 3 hard drives, so I unplugged
one to allow two plugs on the same line to go to the video card. The
computer came on with text on the screen, so it was an instant
improvement, but I disabled the wrong hard drive. It couldn't boot.
So, I hooked that one up and took off a different one. Results were
not great. I forgot which plug went where. So, i redid it, and it
booted up, but had a new error.

I wrote down the name of the missing file, but I have misplaced the
paper. I put in the windows CD to repair it, and it didn't want to
repair. So, I picked the overall reinstall. It went through that
process twice. Not successful the first time. The computer started
beeping a lot when I tried to reboot. The second time, it came up in
safe mode.

The current error message is this:

During the last boot-up, your system hung for an improper CPU speed.
Your system is now working in safe mode. To optimize the system
performance and reliability, make sure the CPU speed conforms with the
specifications or your CPU.

Would changing a video card affect the CPU speed? It says the CPU
speedis 2667MHz which sounds correct.

My computer is a system that was purchased and put together by
somebody else. I bought it used, but he did give me all the CDs and
booklets that came with it. The motherboard is Asus brand, P4PE. I
have had it for 3 or 4 years with no other problems.

The new video card is nVidia eGeForce 6800 Ultra (256MB). The old one
was an Asus V9180 Suite 64Mb DDR MX440


Any suggestions on what I should try? Should I go ahead and leave the
settings the same and try to reboot it again. Or should I try
something different?

According to the box, I have all the minimum requirements for this
video card. The minimum CPU is 2 GHz.
 
I have known for awhile that my video card was dying. The fan quit
months ago, and the motherboard would beep if I watched a video or
scrolled a lot. For the last month or so, the computer started
crashing, and would take multiple tries to boot up. Then it died
completely. The computer would "run", make a few normal clicks and
beeps, but nothing ever came up on the screen.

So, I got a new (used) video card. It goes into a slot and hooks up to
two power plugs for hard drives. I have 3 hard drives, so I unplugged
one to allow two plugs on the same line to go to the video card. The
computer came on with text on the screen, so it was an instant
improvement, but I disabled the wrong hard drive. It couldn't boot.
So, I hooked that one up and took off a different one. Results were
not great. I forgot which plug went where. So, i redid it, and it
booted up, but had a new error.

I wrote down the name of the missing file, but I have misplaced the
paper. I put in the windows CD to repair it, and it didn't want to
repair. So, I picked the overall reinstall. It went through that
process twice. Not successful the first time. The computer started
beeping a lot when I tried to reboot. The second time, it came up in
safe mode.

The current error message is this:

During the last boot-up, your system hung for an improper CPU speed.
Your system is now working in safe mode. To optimize the system
performance and reliability, make sure the CPU speed conforms with the
specifications or your CPU.

Would changing a video card affect the CPU speed? It says the CPU
speedis 2667MHz which sounds correct.

My computer is a system that was purchased and put together by
somebody else. I bought it used, but he did give me all the CDs and
booklets that came with it. The motherboard is Asus brand, P4PE. I
have had it for 3 or 4 years with no other problems.

The new video card is nVidia eGeForce 6800 Ultra (256MB). The old one
was an Asus V9180 Suite 64Mb DDR MX440


Any suggestions on what I should try? Should I go ahead and leave the
settings the same and try to reboot it again. Or should I try
something different?

According to the box, I have all the minimum requirements for this
video card. The minimum CPU is 2 GHz.
Click to expand...

The message you're seeing "improper CPU speed", could be coming from
the BIOS. Asus has crash detection, and even a freeze in Windows
might trigger it. A side effect, is the BIOS settings are returned
to default values. That might not affect you, as some boards have
viable default BIOS values, and don't need correction. One of my boards
was a nuisance, as a couple things worked best with non-default values,
so I always had to go into the BIOS and correct them, if I was getting
that kind of error.

If it was my machine, I'd want to enter the BIOS, have a look around,
and see if anything needs correction. Just in case.

There has got to be something more to this problem, than is evident
right now. Either a power problem, or some other component is acting
up. Maybe when you replaced the video card, that wasn't the only thing
that needed work.

Do you have another ATX power supply that you could test the system with ?

Are all of your peripheral power connectors OK ? Are they burned ?
Are the pins shiny on each connector (as a non-shiny appearance,
means the pins overheated). I've only burned one 1x4 disk drive connector,
and that was because the connector worked loose and became ohmic.
The video card in question, was probably drawing about 5V at 5 amps
from a single 1x4 connector (which is within spec).

You might want to record what beep patterns you're getting.
Just in case there is a known beep error of some sort, and
not just random beeping. Normally beep codes would be
used during startup, and not later. When a system is running,
you might hear a "European police siren" sound, which can be
CPU overheat or CPU Vcore problem. Other than that, it
really shouldn't beep, unless it's crazy (jumped out of code,
into an area which isn't code). There have been cases of
mysterious phantom beeps on systems, but they are likely
repetitive events with identical patterns in each case.
(Like a single beep, every ten minutes.) Not usually random
in nature.

If you have Asus Probe or Speedfan loaded, you might check
power supply voltages. At least, if you can get the OS to run.
If not, you may need to use a multimeter. Or simpler, is to
replace the power supply with a known good spare, for a quick
test. If it stops beeping with a spare supply, then you know
what's wrong (weak supply).

The power supply will have a label on the side of it. For
a machine like that (P4 era), I'd recommend 12V @ 15A minimum
rating. And possibly more, depending on how many other toys
are in the box. Back in that era, there was one pretty
crappy power supply, which was rated at 500W, but only
offered 12V @ 10A output, and that meant that even a
puny processor, would "tip over" the power supply. But
even a reputable brand, could fail on you.

I've had one case here, where I connected one Molex power
cable, to the video card and to a hard drive. The video
card drew so much power from the cable, that it caused the
hard drive to spin down and spin up again, over and over.
That means the voltage drop is such, as to be dipping
below the hard drive minimum level. The hard drive
checks the voltage, before allowing spinup to occur.

The cure for that, is to give an entire power supply cable
to the video card. And move the disk drives to their own
cable. That is enough separation, to stop the spin down and
spin up problem (if it's happening).

Paul
 
Back
Top