Geforce 7300 LE - Blue screen of death - Multiple lines down screen.

[SeanWHall]

Today I booted my computer up to be promoted with a black screen, I gave it a good half an hour before forcing it to shutdown, to which when I booted it back up. Was then promoted with a blue screen about the video card not being able to lead, that happened twice.

I then booted it into safe mode, fiddled around with the drivers to see what was going on, after restarting it again, I got the same black screen, this kept on happening. I then concluded my best solution was to install XP, this worked the video card runs. So the card is not dead, but there are multiple blue lines going down the screen in 4 columns. After going into the device manager I saw that it claimed it was not installed, then I went to Google and downloaded the driver, after installing the computers goes to the same black screen that I got on windows 7.

I have no clue what the problem is, so any help would be most appreciated. Also I tried installing Linux, but after getting though then loading screen of the installer, it goes to the black screen. At the moment in am on my tablet so sorry if there are so many mistakes. I'll try and get some photos of how it looks.

PC Specs:

- Dell Dimension E520
- Intel pentium D
- 2gb Ram
- Nvidia Geforce 7300 LE

Photos:
N/A





Thank you, any help will be hugely appreciated.

Sean Hall.

 

[paulpicks21]

Hi Sean,

I don't like to say it, but it sounds like the graphics card is dead. I had the same issue on an old 8800gts, it would work until I installed the drivers, then I would get very bad artifacts/lines down the screen.
I tried it on 2 different PC's with the same end result once the drivers were installed.

Paul.

 

[bulletng]

Usually if you see artifacts that means you video card is dead or dying. Especially if a driver reinstall/update doesn't solve the issue. Either way it's not worth messing around with it too much (personal experience). Hopefully you can RMA it!

Have you tried re-seating the video card?

 

[SeanWHall]

Sorry, Re-seating?

Also thanks for the replies. Does anyone know what cause`s this?

 

[bulletng]

Sorry, Re-seating?

Also thanks for the replies. Does anyone know what cause`s this?

Re-seating means to basically take out the video card and re-insert it in. Make sure you shutdown and unplug from the power before you do this as you don't want any ESD.

Cards can go bad at any time and without warning. Sometimes it's a manufacturer problem that rarely ever happens. Most of the time the issues comes from overheating.

I used to have a GTX 280 that I had to RMA four times due to artifacts until they decided to replace with a different series (GTX 400). It was just a known bad series that wasn't made very well.

 

[paulpicks21]

How long have you had the card Sean?

I'm guessing its 6 or 7 years old now? As bulletng says cards can go bad especially the older they get like anything in life I suppose.

You could test it in another PC just to be 100% sure, but I bet it's just overheated and died.


Paul.