Guess it's that time again

{OF}Barney_B · 10-05-2005, 06:13 PM

My computer has taken a major dump since I activated DoD:Source and/or did the updates for Steam/associated games to the point that I cannot play any game....after about 30 seconds the screen freezes and eventually goes black, the sound loops and there's nothing to be done except hit the reset switch. Valve, Steam, ATI, Creative and a plethora of other groups have been little or no help in solving this crisis (even system restore lost it's mind) so it's burn needed files to CD (or DVD) and format the entire mess. So if anyone wonders that's where I'm at now (not in the deepwoods of Mio as of today). In theory, this shouldn't take too long to be back online...the downloading will take days though <sigh>.

{OF}Impaired · 10-05-2005, 06:47 PM

We will frag on your behalf there Barney and God speed with the HD and getting back to us

Cheers mate

{OF}Flying_Dutchman · 10-05-2005, 08:01 PM

Good Luck Barney.

Steam really sucks that way....Gotta start all over again.

dudio · 10-05-2005, 08:09 PM

This may be dumb, but can you reinstall DirectX
and see what happens? That and video driver removal/reinstall.

{OF}Barney_B · 10-05-2005, 08:26 PM

I think I fingered it out. I tried all that stuff dudester...even moved my sound card to various PCI slots to no avail and I finally decided to start over. For some reason I was staring into the open case with my minimaglite to aid in seeing and something didn't seem right. And then I saw it; not turning and allowing heat to abuse my GPU. Seems the fan on my 9800 Pro was stuck and not turning. I briefly though of sticking my finger in there and moving the fan to see if it was burnt out or just stuck but then I noticed that nice aluminum branding iro...heat sink and opted out on that. Grabbing my comb from the desk, I started rotating the fan and it resisted at first (I was probably turning it the wrong way) but all at once it started going on it's own. After about 30 minutes I tried to play Dungeon Siege 2 and it worked with no problems. I'll try those Steam games in a little while (I probably owe Valve/Steam and a host of others an apology for the not so nice things I said about them in public and under my breath). I'm going to have a closer look at that fan and see about repairing it or replacing it.

I still want to gut the system only because I finally talked myself into doing it. Now I have to talk myself down. Listen to some soothing music, yeah, that's it...Tangerine Dreams are on their way.