oops
 

sooo.. i kinda dropped my desktop.. and unsupprisingly im having some major issues

My system specs are below, and im running windows vista
I cannot make it past the windows vista logo.
1. after the vista logo the screen briefly turnes black (accompanied by keyboard and mouse lights flashing on and off) then i get the standard lack of video imput message.
2. i have tried startup repair, which constantly states that everything is ok.

however, the computer boots up fine in safe mode.

it seems to me to be a driver issue, as all my files are intact and i have run chkdsk several times
but a driver issue caused by a fall??

Edit. i enabled boot logging and i found that these drivers failed to start : AvgLdx64, AvgMfx64, spldr, Wanarpv6

i also had a graphics card overheat issue earlier that resulted from my zalman vf900's fan getting jammed after the drop.
However, even though the fan is running and the card is seemingly cool... the system log keeps displaying the "system shutdown due to graphics card overheating"

i guess that is my real issue...

any idea why im still getting an overheat error
???
does anyone have any ideas?

did you remount the Zalman on the VGA card? might be an issue with the mounting of the cooler on the GPU core

My guess is that the graphics-cooler isn't properly attached to the chip anymore due to the fall. First thing you should do is dismount the cooler and re-attach it properly. If that didn't work, I'd try doing the same with the CPU-cooler, although I don't think this would do any good, but I like mounting coolers :-p

Last thing I can think of is that your HDD received a fatal blow, causing the head touching the platter somewhere, making that area unreadable. It could very well be that just that area contains startup files for Vista (although very unlikely, since chdsk didn't show up any errors).

Yeah i pretty much did all that, i did notice that the cooler was loose after the fall. so i remounted it. however, i also noticed that the thermal paste (as5) had turned from gray to an orangy color and i have the feeling that being exposed to the air at high temperatures caused the paste to lose some of its thermal transfer characteristics due to oxidization.

So my next step is going to be to clean of the old and put on the new. Ill see if that fixes my overheating problem...

If it does ill put up pictures of what the oxidized paste looks like, so other people could avoid my problem

I really want a t-rad 2 heatsink anyway. This might be good occasion to swap mine out. Ive had that Zalman fan for years, it could use a rest.

i reapplied the thermal paste (i used noctua nh-1) and im still having the same issue

i uninstalled the ati drivers hoping that perhaps the drives are confusing the video card, but no luck


why is it not "overheating" in safe mode. but crashes immediately on vista startup?

i hope i dont have to somehow go into the video bios and disable powerplay

but doing that would be far preferable compared to loosing my 4850 else ill be stuck with my 2 x1550s in crossfire again

well, the computer worked fine once i uninstalled all the ATI drivers. it booted right up with no isseus.

windows vista immedaitely downloaded and reinstalled the drivers.

i ran GPUZ and found that my idle temps are a perfectly acceptable (for a 4850) 50c


i ran fur mark and the temperature never exceeded 70c...


but once again, when i restarted my computer i got the standard overheat system shutdown error...

this error message, comes from Vista? or ATI drivers?

it comes from the ATI drivers

i only found the "system shutdown due to graphics card overheating" error in the system log under safe mode.

this error did not appear when i uninstalled the drivers

also, the red lights that indicate excessive temperate on the graphics card only appear when the drivers are installed. not when i am running the windows generic drivers during safe mode.

interestingly the lights also do not appear after the ati drivers have been automatically installed by vista, but before the computer restarts

as i said the problem returns after the computer is rebooted after the ati driver instalation

I would try an older ATI driver, 8.10 or earlier to see what it does

yeah i will try that

edit:
well now i do not get the graphics card overheat error, the driver simply does not start up

i'm going to try a clean install. computer was getting bogged down anyway