DigitalSympathies
14th Mar 2012, 05:46 AM
Hey all. I'm in the middle of editing a new sims voiceover episode in Sony Vegas on Windows 7 32-bit - and I've run into a hardware(?) problem that I've never seen the likeness or severity of before. I've had this with an overheating chipset in the past, but the symptoms were a bit different and I'm on an nVidia GeForce GTS 450 Limited. It can run smoothly on max settings for BF3 and Metro 2033, and has never given me problems since installing it. My monitor cannot be the issue as I just checked it out myself a few days ago. I run a small basement computer repairs service with a few other people so I know pretty much what I'm doing even though I'm the backups, installations, and harddrives person. I have 3GB DDR2 RAM and two of my backup harddrives are in the red (almost full) state. The main has a decent 40.7 GB free which is normal.
Now, onto the problem.
This started when I was on a sound effects website (sounddogs) downloading some background ambience effects for my project. My screen locked up and it flickered between the sounddogs search tab, the desktop, and the tab that was playing the sound effect. The screen went dark (it looked to be unlit) and then it came back and let me download the effect. I tried to boot Avira which was on standby and realtime protection was NOT activated (it tries to block me from booting up TS2 for some reason so I usually turn it off until I need it) and it gave me an error: avcentre.exe, bad image error.
http://i.imgur.com/r50nJ.jpg
I shrugged it off and decided to give it ten minutes as I needed to comment on a friend's YouTube video I was watching. All of a sudden, TWO more instances of this flickering nonsense. I had Vegas booted in the background but I had only imported what I needed for scene five - I hadn't started editing. I'd rendered three more parts before that with no unusual occurrences. Finally, I rebooted, and Avira ran just fine. It scanned with no errors or malware detected, as I expected. I get onto YouTube to search for a similar video of my problem to show you guys and the screen does it AGAIN, this time with the video showing up as a green square with the navigation preview on the bottom showing the actual contents of the video. (I'm on Chrome by the way, other browsers do this too and Internet Explorer hasn't been set up - why would I need it - so I used IETab and it still repeats what I said above.)
Leaving my computer alone for about an hour, I then come back and it's still doing this. Task Manager is reporting with only essential Windows services running it's using up 2.37 GB of RAM with the charts all over the place - it's using 2.37 GB, and then peaks up to as full as it'll get, and then down to nearly nothing, and then back up to 2.37. Regular "standby" should use next to nothing. Checked the temps, and nothing unusual. I'm going to clean out my computer tomorrow, of course, and I've checked the cables - nothing's loose.
My hypothesis is that my graphics card could be failing and switching to the integrated momentarily, but that makes no sense as it's next to new and it's rather cold in here. My case is well-ventilated and I do have problems with a fan failing in the back as it gets too hot during the summer months (wow, that's counterproductive, a cooling device getting too hot) but as it's winter it's freezing as hell down here. It's got way over what the graphics card demands of the power supply as well, I believe it's 650 or 950W. The back is covered by a ventilation grid so I can't read it. Sigh.
Thank you for all of your help.
EDIT: I took a look inside the case, as well as with my diagnostics guy and was not pleased to find out that my graphics card had overheated and was trying to default back to the integrated one as it's supposed to do, but the card itself kept on spazzing out. Cleaned it out and all is fixed, I hope. It's just running a bit quirky.
Now, onto the problem.
This started when I was on a sound effects website (sounddogs) downloading some background ambience effects for my project. My screen locked up and it flickered between the sounddogs search tab, the desktop, and the tab that was playing the sound effect. The screen went dark (it looked to be unlit) and then it came back and let me download the effect. I tried to boot Avira which was on standby and realtime protection was NOT activated (it tries to block me from booting up TS2 for some reason so I usually turn it off until I need it) and it gave me an error: avcentre.exe, bad image error.
http://i.imgur.com/r50nJ.jpg
I shrugged it off and decided to give it ten minutes as I needed to comment on a friend's YouTube video I was watching. All of a sudden, TWO more instances of this flickering nonsense. I had Vegas booted in the background but I had only imported what I needed for scene five - I hadn't started editing. I'd rendered three more parts before that with no unusual occurrences. Finally, I rebooted, and Avira ran just fine. It scanned with no errors or malware detected, as I expected. I get onto YouTube to search for a similar video of my problem to show you guys and the screen does it AGAIN, this time with the video showing up as a green square with the navigation preview on the bottom showing the actual contents of the video. (I'm on Chrome by the way, other browsers do this too and Internet Explorer hasn't been set up - why would I need it - so I used IETab and it still repeats what I said above.)
Leaving my computer alone for about an hour, I then come back and it's still doing this. Task Manager is reporting with only essential Windows services running it's using up 2.37 GB of RAM with the charts all over the place - it's using 2.37 GB, and then peaks up to as full as it'll get, and then down to nearly nothing, and then back up to 2.37. Regular "standby" should use next to nothing. Checked the temps, and nothing unusual. I'm going to clean out my computer tomorrow, of course, and I've checked the cables - nothing's loose.
My hypothesis is that my graphics card could be failing and switching to the integrated momentarily, but that makes no sense as it's next to new and it's rather cold in here. My case is well-ventilated and I do have problems with a fan failing in the back as it gets too hot during the summer months (wow, that's counterproductive, a cooling device getting too hot) but as it's winter it's freezing as hell down here. It's got way over what the graphics card demands of the power supply as well, I believe it's 650 or 950W. The back is covered by a ventilation grid so I can't read it. Sigh.
Thank you for all of your help.
EDIT: I took a look inside the case, as well as with my diagnostics guy and was not pleased to find out that my graphics card had overheated and was trying to default back to the integrated one as it's supposed to do, but the card itself kept on spazzing out. Cleaned it out and all is fixed, I hope. It's just running a bit quirky.