Good with computers? Help please!

basilmarket.com forums : Maple Story Tech Help & Patches | 11 posts archived

thread starter iGlen Jul 01 2009 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

Well I've had a dell dimension 4600 for almost 5 years now and up until now, there have been very few problems with it. But recently the video card has caused the computer to freeze and reboot. It used to happen only every once in a while, but it gradually started to happen more often. Now I can barely log in before it freezes. When it freezes, vertical black lines appear on the screen and after a few seconds it goes black. If I wait another few seconds, it shows a blue screen which says that nv4_disp is stuck in an infinite loop. It then tells me to restart. I know it's referring to my video card but I read that the power supply could also be the problem. I tried uninstalling the current drivers and downloading new ones, but to no avail. Please help me solve this problem. I'm currently using a Geforce FX 5200(I know it sucks :P) and have 1.25gm of ram(Also sucks). Let me know if more info is needed to help solve this problem.

skye09 07/01/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

It could be your PSU, or it could be your GPU for some reason dieing. The black line effect your experiencing is called "artifacting" and the Nv4_disp is your GPU driver crashing. Honestly, I would say to try getting a new system. From the way it sounds, your system is so old that putting too much more money in it would be a waste.

iGlen 07/01/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

skye09 said: "It could be your PSU, or it could be your GPU for some reason dieing. The black line effect your experiencing is called "artifacting" and the Nv4_disp is your GPU driver crashing. Honestly, I would say to try getting a new system. From the way it sounds, your system is so old that putting too much more money in it would be a waste." Yeah that's what I was thinking. I took off the side panel and there was so much dust in the CPU. I could barely breathe. Ahh I guess I'm just gonna have to cough up enough money for a new computer. I was just gonna upgrade the video card but I'm not even sure if that's the problem and the computer is pretty much obsolete anyways. Thanks anyways. :P

BobR Jul 01 2009 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

Most likely your video card is overheating due to dust buildup. Your video card most likely has a fan on it to cool the GPU chip. Take a look at yours when the power is on and see if you can tell if it's spinning. If it's not, you've found your problem. Unfortunately GPU fans are not easy to replace. You'd probably be better off replacing the video card itself. (Check eBay for deals. I just recently installed a GeForce 4 MX440 in a system I use just for online stuff that I bought for $4.99, brand new. You can easily get a better card than the one you have now for surprisingly cheap prices like that.) If it's really dusty, the fan and heatsink could be clogged with dust, causing heat to build up until the GPU begins to fail, causing the driver failure being reported by Windows. If you're familiar with working with computer hardware at all you can try cleaning it by carefully vacuuming it with a vacuum cleaner (CAREFULLY), then using "canned air" (which you can buy at most stores that sell computers and comouter stuff like Target or Walmarts, or a local computer store) to blow out the remaining dust from the fan and heatsink. If you have a small CLEAN paintbrush (like for watercolors, not for painting your house), you can try CAREFULLY brushing the dust off the fan blades and surrounding heat sink. If the case is really dusty inside, heat is probably also building up in the motherboard CPU heatsink which can be a bad thing and cause Windows instability and lockups beyond what you're experiencing with the video. If you're not familiar with working on computers, consider taking the system in to a service department to have it thoroughly cleaned inside. I clean all of mine every spring when the weather starts to heat up because that's the time heat buildup begins to show up as a real problem.

littlejohn7 07/07/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

Could it be missing directx 10 drivers? If the computer still works and plays videos why won't it play maple?

ryansdoom 07/07/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

i had the same graphics card as you for a while :o if you never updated the driver, go on the nvidia site and download it. without the driver it will still run but not as well as it could. or get a new graphics card.

blazingsword 07/07/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

There are a few things that I can think of off the top of my head, -power supply isn't supplying enough power, causing the GPU to mailfunction -too much dust will trap heat, and too much heat will cause the chip to not work properly, or to shutoff -the gpu is just starting to stop working You could try clearing the dust, leaving the computer off for about 30 minutes, then turning it back on and seeing if it helps If that isn't it, you could try replacing the gpu, but with a 5 year old computer, I would recommend just getting a new one, as you could replace it and run fine for a while, but it probably wouldn't be long until another part starts failing If money is a problem, try checking newegg.com, or somewhere similar, as you can easily find a good computer for 300-400 dollars

iGlen 07/07/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

blazingsword said: "There are a few things that I can think of off the top of my head, -power supply isn't supplying enough power, causing the GPU to mailfunction -too much dust will trap heat, and too much heat will cause the chip to not work properly, or to shutoff -the gpu is just starting to stop working You could try clearing the dust, leaving the computer off for about 30 minutes, then turning it back on and seeing if it helps If that isn't it, you could try replacing the gpu, but with a 5 year old computer, I would recommend just getting a new one, as you could replace it and run fine for a while, but it probably wouldn't be long until another part starts failing If money is a problem, try checking newegg.com, or somewhere similar, as you can easily find a good computer for 300-400 dollars" Mmmm thanks... But how would I go about fixing a power supply problem?

blazingsword 07/07/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

You would probably have to get a new one

mexicanin 07/07/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

yea if its covered in dust it needs some major cleaning i clean my pc once every 4 or 5 months and works fine my pc is older than 5 and has no problem other some minor viral outbrakes and that it can't update (the conflicker was real) all i need is to buy a new pc but im not really familiar with vista and sometimes vista pisses me off (my mom has a laptop with vista) sure its faster but i cant tweak as much as i can with a regular xp and i rather get a mac but i cant use it for gaming so... my tips are either clean/update/upgrade your pc buy a mac quit maple and play WoW orr... become pc whiz and buy a linux and program yourself (i'd personally go for the 1st)

blazingsword 07/07/09 + PM | QUOTE | PERMALINK | REPORT

It's possible to go back to XP, all you really need to do is install it, but your computer not having the necessary drivers for XP to recognize things like the hard drive can make it a lot harder