Please help with strange meltdown

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jake
  • Start date Start date
J

Jake

I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard drive.
Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced a sudden
re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning, nothing. It
just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to desktop, the screen
all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The desktop display broke up
into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a checkerboard pattern - in all
sorts of unusual colors, and then started shifting like the display was
running downward. I did a hard shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one I
use for non-work purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran
virus scan and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a
couple of stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing, and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on this
hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different s/w on
the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on one or the
other, display resolutions, etc - for serious troubleshooting, has anyone
experienced this specific thing before?

Thank you,

jakesnake
 
Jake said:
I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard
drive. Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced
a sudden re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning,
nothing. It just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to
desktop, the screen all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The
desktop display broke up into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a
checkerboard pattern - in all sorts of unusual colors, and then
started shifting like the display was running downward. I did a hard
shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one I use for non-work
purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran virus scan
and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a couple of
stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing, and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on
this hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different
s/w on the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on
one or the other, display resolutions, etc - for serious
troubleshooting, has anyone experienced this specific thing before?

Thank you,

jakesnake
Click to expand...

Is this the first time this happened? I experienced a similar problem as
the checker board symptom once when my monitor cable was almost falling off.
I shut down and tightened the cable and it never happened again, of coarse.
I would wait and see if it happens again before I worried to much. Might
have been a power fluctuation of a bad power supply maybe.

J.
 
I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard drive.
Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced a sudden
re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning, nothing. It
just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to desktop, the screen
all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The desktop display broke up
into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a checkerboard pattern - in all
sorts of unusual colors, and then started shifting like the display was
running downward. I did a hard shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one I
use for non-work purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran
virus scan and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a
couple of stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing, and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on this
hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different s/w on
the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on one or the
other, display resolutions, etc - for serious troubleshooting, has anyone
experienced this specific thing before?

Thank you,

jakesnake
Click to expand...

It was your video card. Typically when this happens it's
dying, but maybe a brief AC (or PSU) power anomoly caused
the video card to only temporarily malfunction, returning to
normal after a complete shut-off. I'd expect it's going to
happen again though, possibly varying with the temp of the
system.... or maybe I"m wrong, but that's when I've seen
similar video rectangles.
 
Jake said:
I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard drive.
Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced a sudden
re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning, nothing. It
just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to desktop, the
screen
all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The desktop display broke up
into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a checkerboard pattern - in all
sorts of unusual colors, and then started shifting like the display was
running downward. I did a hard shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one
I
use for non-work purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran
virus scan and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a
couple of stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing,
and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on this
hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different s/w
on
the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on one or the
other, display resolutions, etc - for serious troubleshooting, has anyone
experienced this specific thing before?
Click to expand...

If You see it happen again, check whether the fans of Your computer, esp.
the VGA-card, are running properly.

Good luck,
Rene
 
Back
Top