Hello GS,

Today I was bored to I decided I would check out the windows 8 preview. So, I made some space on a drive (happens to be E: drive) and partitioned 40gb, then restarted computer and booted from disc containing the W8 setup. All was fine, I chose to install on another partition and chose this new partition, the setup ran and I went to watch tv. Once I came back, the screen was just blank and nothing seemed to be happening so after a bit (probably at least a half hour) I restarted the pc and a graphic came up looked like a fish with an 8 in it and a swirly was below it, after that screen its just blank, nothing. Also, I've tried to get back to my windows 7 on C: drive and can't seem to.

Im not a pro with this stuff, it is a pcI built and I would like to get back to it obviously, not sure what I did wrong, but I know someone here can help.

Thanks!

yeah, i know they are different. i guess ill hold off on getting new ram for now. I should get the new gpu in a couple days (newegg rocks) so we'll see if all is good.

i ordered a 5770, it seemed good for the price of $150 bucks, we'll see

k, i just read up on artifacting and apparently ram causes it also. this concerns me because the PC has also acted up recently by not starting the whole way (it runs, but no monitor or usb functionality). I've fixedd this by removing one stick on RAM and restarting, then inserting the 2nd stick and restarting, but no graphics issues were present at the time.

Should i get some new ram too? i dont have a lot of money at the time, so i want a quick but good fix that will hold me over,from reading the article, it seems the ram my be bad and actually ruined the GPU :(

Strange dots and colours you described seems like artifacting, which basically means its dead.

GTR12

what is dead? the GPU (just ordered a new) or the whole damn PC?

well, the game could have caused the video issues, but i doubt a reinstall would fix it, because it is totally fried, can get to the windows start screen, but it wont load my desktop, goes to a blue crash screen.

card is 3 years old (ati 2900xt) so its about time to blow another 200 bucks :(

So my PC was on like normal, looked normal, nothing wrong. I sat down and launched a game (lord of the rings online) and most of the screen had purple dots all over and nothing happened. This is the first time having this issue, although previous times my display has crashed momentarily and restarted (not the PC, just the screen would go black, and come back. LOTRO does have a video issue with windows 7 theme, where it switches to basic when the game starts, i dont believe this would cause the problem.

So I restarted the PC and now the pixels are all messed up, streeks on colors and what not. Also, two purple bands (thick) are vertical on the screen, same spot every restart. All i can think of is the GPU is shot. Unfortunately, I cant test this because the mobo doesnt have a monitor plug in.

So, I need opinions of GS users, what is up?

My parents have a dell PC that is about 3 years old or so, todaywhen they turned it on, all the monitor showed was an underscore cursor (or whatever you call that) it was blinking in the top left corner.

When i turn the PC on, it goes to the splash screen, giving the options for setup or boot menu, then goes to the blinking cursor. I was able to get into the boot menu, but there is not much to do there (HDD stuff) so i pushed exit and it went back to the cursor.

Is there any hope?

so now that im typing from my PC, i have only 1 stick in, what do i do now? do i shut down, switch sticks and reboot? do i just put that stick back in and hope it starts?

btw, thanks for the help