[drptop70ss]

My computer locked up last night (typing this from work!) out of the blue my mouse stopped moving. Rebooted the computer, came up but the monitor did not and it came up with a blue box that said "check monitor settings". Rebooted again many times, one time I got the screen back up but it locked up again within minutes, one time my mouse arrow changed to garbled grafics and locked. Booted in safe mode and the system seems to stay up although my screen geometry is wrong. Is there a way to boot in safe mode and then just load one program or driver at a time? I have to figure out what is locking up the system. I am hoping it isnt my hard drive crashing or my video grafics card going away, everything is only a year old. Any ideas or need more info?

 

[Mike]

What operating system are we talking about ?

 

[drptop70ss]

sorry, windows xp service pack 2

 

[MikeJ]

Did you add anything at all ( something like a new program or upgrade some software , get some new drivers, video games, etc. ) change some settings or do anything before the problem started - download the patches regularly, have a virus scanner , run spybot or something like that (usually can tell if you get stuff like pop ups )

oh yeah - or have some kids who use the computer too

or do you mean it's been a year working ok and the problem really came out of nowhere

If you're pretty sure you didn't cause the problem somehow then I would suspect the hardware - just seems real odd it that a monitor problem would start without software changes leaving the hardware being the prime suspect

 

[drptop70ss]

Fixed it..yeah this one came out of nowhere, turns out the cooling fan on my big dollar video card stopped turning, and man did that thing get hot. Card is mounted upside down so I didnt see the fan until I got to look from below the machine. I hit it with electronics cleaner and it is alive again and so far the system is staying up. This really caused some strange lockups, sometimes when resetting the system would just sit there and not even run the memory tests. But all is well now, thanks for the responses!

 

[MikeJ]

check with the vendor anyway for known problems or recommendations or even ask for a free new replacement unit