Graphics Card Crash

[MrPrice]

Every time I've booted up Garrysmod in the past few days without fail it seems to have caused this issue where my screen gets all of groups of three pixels spread in lines across the screen. The monitor proceeds to gain and loose conection to the actual display, before the entire computer just blue screens. I've tried sending it in to get checked out, and have tried scanning it over for viruses but I'm coming up blank. The weirdest thing seems to be that all of my other games seem to be working just fine, and haven't caused the same issues.

Is anyone else having this issue? How can I try and fix it?

 

[Shisno]

First: Are your drivers up to date?

Second: What do you have GMOD's graphics setting at?

Third:Have you installed any addons recently?

Fourth, and what should be the last resort, have you reinstalled Garry's Mod?

 

[MrPrice]

I'm double checking my drivers right now, just in case something isn't exactly up to snuff.

I'm running Gmod in Direct X 8.1 compatibility, so that I can keep it on the highest settings, and still have fantastic frame-rate.

Last thing I added to my gmod was that footstep replacer, just because I was bored of the default ones.

I really hope it doesn't come down to reinstalling gmod, because that might take a while, but if it dose, nothing major lost there.

 

[Shisno]

Does your graphics card have software for tweaking it's voltage/clock speed? Who knows, your card might be tweaking out.

 

[MrPrice]

No clue, guy who gave it to me a few years back said it was running two graphics cards, but I've not really needed to do that much digging about as the whole thing was set up out of the box.

 

[Shisno]

He did give you the original software discs for everything though, right?

 

[MrPrice]

I've got them around here somewhere, know I've got them, but not where.

 

[Shisno]

Quick, what're your specs?

 

[Chad]

it's either a faulty hard drive or you've got too little ram
check the sata connectors for your hard drive, if there's no pin on them replace it because those things are known to slip out upon boot up and cause issues like this
make sure your ram sticks are in place entirely, it should make a click when you push down onto it

without looking at it i cant tell but try to run some things like combofix and malwarebytes aswell, if you could take a video or something and send it to me itd be easier to pinpoint your problem

 

[MrPrice]

It's not much, but it's mine. At least until I finally upgrade.

System Manufacturer: alienware
System Model: alienware
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.1GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 4094MB RAM
Page File: 2230MB used, 2118MB available
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Manufacturer: NVIDIA

The whole weird thing is that it only really seems to be Gmod, everything else seems to run fine.

 

[Arzalis]

What exactly does "everything else" entail?

Most of the parts in that computer are pretty old, and it's possible something is just on it's last leg. Depending on what else you're running, maybe Garrysmod is causing whatever it is to work hard enough for this to happen.

As a guess, it sounds like your graphics card is overheating. Are all the fans running okay still? Do they make any weird noises like grinding sounds? At the very least, due to the issues with the monitor and such, I'd say the problem is definitely coming from the 8800.

 

[Chad]

im pretty sure thick pieces of cardboard work more effectively than an 8800 does

 

[MrPrice]

I've had almost no problems Running Skyrim, or Saints Row The Third. It really just seems to be stemming from garrysmod, but I'll definitely go back through, and check to see if there's anything I might have missed. The odd thing is that my computer is supposed to have a second graphics card, but for some reason it isn't showing up on any of my checks, even though I can clearly see it's plugged in right.

 

[Arzalis]

Is there an SLI bridge between the two cards?

It'll look similar to that.

 

[MrPrice]

i'll try and take a few pictures of the inside, if I ever manage to get a working camera, but It looks like I've got one of those in there. At least I think it's one of them, looks pretty close.

Edit: Looking at my graphics card the second one seems to have fried itself, so I'm going to pull the second, and see if that somehow fixes all of my problems.

 

[MrPrice]

View attachment 915 This is what I'm seeing, if someone knows how to fix this, then please be my geust. At this point I'm just getting confused, because now it's happening seemingly at random, and not just when I go to boot up garrysmod.

 

[Arzalis]

Graphics card is dying. You can check the monitor too by plugging a different one in, but I'll guarantee it's just your card dying on you. Be ready to replace it soon.

 

[Annoying Rooster]

I'd get a new card if I were you, and maybe get the ram checked, aswell.

Invest in either a 8 or 10GB of ram. Unless you want to go overkill, and get a 24GB, which isn't neccessary.