May 05
Posted: under Technology.
Finally, a virus that will effect virtually no one in the US. No one in their right mind would click on a link for tickets to the world cup around here. It’ll get less clicks than a penis enlargement email.
May 05
Posted: under Technology.
So I really hate my computer sometimes. For quite a while now, I’ve had a problem with the screen blanking out. Suddenly everything will stop moving and then the screen will blank out for about 5 seconds and then come back. The monitor reports a loss of signal. Annoyingly as well, when it comes back, the screen is half gone and until you force it to redraw itself (highlight text, move the window around, move a window over it, etc) you don’t see everything.
This is a pain in the ass, though somewhat livable with.
Then a week ago it started rebooting. This really makes it hard to get anything done. I started doing some research and stuff and I believe I found the problem. It’s called the Infinite loop problem. It’s an issue that nvidia cards will have with certain systems. I believe it comes down to some sort of a memory conflict between the mobo and the video card. Most people just seem to experience the trouble while playing directx games, but lucky me I get it all the time. There seems to be about 18.5 million things you can do that might fix the problem, but so far I’ve found that at least half of those don’t work for me. Ugh.
The really weird thing is that I’ve had this video card (geforce mx420….nothing but the best for me! 
) for some time….it wasn’t originally an issue, and when it started the screen blanking shit it didn’t do it nearly as often as it down it now. It’s oddly predictable as well. When I get certain things going it will blank out like clockwork. Certain websites work this way for example (this site happens to be one of those).
At first I was hoping it was a heat/power issue. After unlpugging a bunch of stuff I pretty much ruled out power being an issue (I’m running an AthlonXP 1700+ on a 300w PSU here….sufficient but not so much extra capacity that I’d never think I’d overtaxed the thing). The heat sink/fan were clogged with dust (since that’s what they do, afterall) so I took it apart and cleaned it all up but that was no help either. Most importantly, I know it’s something with the video card itself because when I put in my old voodoo3, which I happen to be using just now, I have no problems. It’s all just truly annoying.
I think older video card have some sort of a problem with my monitor as well I’ve found.. For some reason, when I first put in the voodoo3 I couldn’t get the monitor keep the display completely on the screen…it was very odd. If I put the geforce back in it would be fine. I went so far as to try my other video card I have…..a bit of a legacy from high school I must say…it’s an STB velocity with a whopping 4 megs of memory….I was impressed at the time because it actually had 3d accelleration . Yeah, it’s a bit out of date. It didn’t solve the monitor thing, but it was nothing short of funny to watch it at work. For one thing, it couldn’t dsiplay anything over 16 bit color at 1600×12000 (go figure 
). Most importantly though, it was god aweful slow. I could see, just in windows doing normal tasks like web browsing, that it was slow to redraw certain things. It wasn’t unusable, but it wasn’t terribly far off…. It’s a wonder I don’t use more 8 year old hardware (actually, my floppy drive dates from that era…. Sure, I haven’t used it since like 2002 probably, but who’s couting?)
On the up side, for some reason now it seems to work OK. I can fit my whole screen onto the, well, screen. I’m glad I don’t have to choose between seeing my clock or the start button anymore. I’ll have to keep messing with the geforce. Sigh.
