Bad News! Very Bad News!! Update!!!!!!!!! 8O

[Don. Edwards]

Well everyone I have some very bad news. Saturday night while I was working on my new Volcanic moon texture I started to notice something strange going on with the way my cursor was being drawn on the screen. Well I figured my machine was getting buggy so I saved my work and rebooted the system. Well things started to get worse. After getting back to the desktop I now had four little dash like shadows following my cursor around the screen. Also when I opened any windows or menus there shadow was being very poorly drawn. Then the system locked up on me. I then did a hard start and as the system booted I saw garbage drawn here and there all over the post screen. After getting back into Windows XP again the system was acting goofy. The screen draws then continued to degrade and my system kept locking up. Well I started the normal things like reinstall drivers, no good; I did some tweaking to my system a couple of days earlier and figured that might be causing the problem so I chose to roll the system back. Again no good.
I then figured that what I was seeing was the death of my GeForce4 TI 4600 128MB card. So I pulled the card and dropped the only decent card I had, an old TNT 16MB card. Like an idiot I sold my Nvidia Quadro2 64MB card two weeks ago because I needed the cash. Well the system booted fine and Windows XP was behaving itself. Well I got to thinking maybe the card was over heating. It was quite dusty so I cleaned it off and reinstalled the card.
WHAT A MISTAKE THAT WAS!
Windows XP than totally keeled over and died on me. Nothing but kernel panics. Even after I put the TNT back in. So I had to resort to a good old repair install and I just finished getting things up and going again. But there is a major problem. I can no longer test any of my work under Celestia as this TNT card does not run Celestia worth beans. So now I am looking at a nearly dead GeForce4 card and no way to continue to test anything I do. I can still work on my textures but I simply have no way to test them any longer. It is going to be quite a while, probably several months before I can purchase a replacement card.
So here is what I plan to do. I plan on continuing to work on my textures and add-ons but be aware that I am flying blind. I am not sure how I can release anything without testing it at this point. And if that wasn't bad enough I might also be loosing my access to the internet for a while.
I hate this. Things were just starting to roll at a good pace and now this. And this GeForce4 card is just now a year old. Life sucks.
Well I have always said that the Edwards were cursed when it comes to electronics. If there is anything bad that comes down the assembly line we seem to be the ones to pick it up. I could make a list of electronic equipment and appliances that would turn your hair white be the time you were done reading it. In the last year alone I lost 2 hard drives, 1 stereo receiver, 1 car cdplayer, 1 Sony Clie Palm handheld, 1 Power Mac 9500, one iMac, and that just the beginning.
So just bare with me on things. I have a couple of plans possibly in works to solve some of this. But if I disappear from the forum for more than a week than you can assume I lost my internet connection. Don't worry I will eventually be back.

Don. Edwards

[Rassilon]

Hang in there Don...When things seem the worst they usually turn around at some point...

Some of the issues with hardware is just as you explained it....dust...Make sure you periodically clean off all your components with static free air...you know those pretty cans they sell at the computer stores that cost a bundle...Thing is it costs more to replace hardware and dust buildup is nortorious for static discharge...ruining eveything under the sun...including motherboards...

Also while your at it if you do alot of file overwriting make sure you defragment atleast once a week...This will also save you frustration when harddrives fail due to segmented files...A list of hd that require massive defragments...due to thier poor handling of AUs

Maxtor is #1 They may have improved but I have had 3 of these crappers and none of them has lasted more than a year...WITH frequent defrags...
Western Digital
Samsung
Anything pretty much not Seagate

Also Ive heard that fdisk is known to screw up a HD's boot sector...If you have to fdisk the do it once and be done with it...I suppose there are better disk management tools out there...

If you want good prices on equipment try http://www.pricewatch.com

Good Luck!

[Harry]

Hi,

sorry to hear about that, Don. Hope you can get a replacement sooner than you expect (hey, even a GF2 MX can display a 64k VT

A list of hd that require massive defragments...due to thier poor handling of AUs

I don't think defragmentation helps - whether your drive fails doesn't depend of what you do to your data, and if it fails there isn't a difference anyway. BTW, what's AU?

Maxtor is #1 They may have improved but I have had 3 of these crappers and none of them has lasted more than a year...WITH frequent defrags...
Western Digital
Samsung
Anything pretty much not Seagate

The thing is: you never know. It depends too much on the model, and in most cases you only know when it's too late

Also Ive heard that fdisk is known to screw up a HD's boot sector...If you have to fdisk the do it once and be done with it...I suppose there are better disk management tools out there...

Depends on what fdisk you use: the windows fdisk (at least the Win98 one) was extremely bad, deleting wrong partitions if it didn't recognize the partition type and destroying data. linux fdisk is much better, but in either case you have to know exactly what you are doing.

Harald

[jamarsa]

Sorry to hear that, Don. It's really strange, all these faults in your hardware. Perhaps you have a little problem with your electric installation?

I have very few problems with my devices (well, except my small digital camera, which decided to do a submarine album last Christmas ). I have a few rules for them:

- Never buy the cheapest/most expensive. I always look at the middle, tested hardware, but not outdated.

- Don't follow great offers from dubious sources (I include Wal-Marts, Carrefours and such in the list). Sometimes they resell hardware that is intended to work only in assumed conditions (like certain infamous IBM home-directed disks), or tailored to other countries.

-Check your electric installation. If you have frequent failures, voltage peaks, etc., it's time to buy a good UPS (and check your installation, of course).

-Be extremely careful when touching your equipment. Touch something ground-zeroed before handling cards, be sure you have all well plugged before switching on, leave space between components for air circulation, be sure all your fans/heatsinks are doing its work (i.e., you don't overheat anything).

-Don't buy second-hand gear, unless you know very well the way it was used before (this applies to cars also )

Ah! And I don't use anything Internet-related in a Microsoft OS...

Well, all resumed, if you are as mean as I am, better take care of what you already have

[bh]

Don...so sorry to hear about your problems...computers are great until they break down...then they are hell on Earth!

I've been without an internet connection for three weeks now...I've started smoking again!

Good luck...I'll be suprised if you don't get any help with this after all you've done!

Many regards...bh.

[fsgregs]

Hi everyone:

The problem is SOLVED. Don Edwards has been investing his time, talent and energy into Celestia at no charge ... for free .... GRATIS ... etc. etc. for over a year. Because of his work, we all have been able to enjoy a Celestia that is so much richer and more beautiful. I trust you will all agree.

I for one have been blown away by Don's textures and I know many of you also have been floored by their quality and have downloaded them at every opportunity. They represent hundreds of volunteer man-hours of his time. Without him, Earth and Mars would simply not be the same. This is not to mention the magnificent textures he has created for me and others on the web for our add-ons. Just look at what he created for the Terraforming Mars activity.

As a result, and with Don's acceptance, I would like to donate a new Nvidia GeForce 4 TI or FX card to him. A new 128 MB card costs only about $120 now on TigerDirect.com, and even a 256 MB card is under $200. Perhaps someone at Nvidia could locate a card for Don that I could buy at a discount???

Alternatively, I have a Nvidia Geforce 4 TI 4200 AGP card with 64 MB of RAM already on hand. I took it out of my computer two months ago when I got a 128 MB version of the same card. It is only 6 months old and in perfect working order. It is sitting on a shelf, unused. Don, if you will accept it as my way of saying thanks, I will send it to you as a gift, for all the work you have done for me. Alternatively, if its too little RAM for your needs, just tell me here or in a private message and I'll get you a new, higher RAM card ASAP. Just tell me the shipping address. Honestly, you need a good card to continue the kind of work that we have all come to love.

This is not charity ... it is obviously my gratitude and my way of saying ... Thanks.

Would that be OK with you?


Frank

[bh]

Well done Frank...brilliant!

Regards...bh.

[Don. Edwards]

Frank I am blown away. I will PM you back ASAP.
Rass, remember I am a computer technician. So I was not going to take this laying down. I have tested the card in two separate machines and the diagnosis is final. The card is dead or nearly there. But I think I know why and everyone should head these words.
My card was manufactured by PNY. Now they are usually pretty good when it comes to video cards and this card did earn very high marks from many website write-ups. That is why I went with them. After cleaning the little bit of dust that was on the backside, I tested in two other machines as I mentioned above. Well as soon as the card would just get warmed up it would start the distortions. This got me to thinking. Many times OEM "original equipment manufactures" and "third party manufactures" take short cuts. Especially when it comes to "Thermal Compounds". That is the usually white gunk you will find under your systems CPU or your video cards GPU. Well PNY chose to take the cheap route and use one of those ultra thin Teflon thermal pads instead of using real thermal grease. So why is this a problem? Well thermal pads have very little moisture or grease in them so with the heat of a CPU or GPU for that matter they tend to dry out. Well that is what happened to my card. The thermal pad was dried out from the heat and it shrunk and split in many areas allowing air to break contact between the GPU and the heat-sink-fan cooling unit. This is certain death for any CPU or GPU as without making proper contact the temperatures inside the CPU or GPU will go through the roof and it will literally start frying itself to death.
When I built up my present system I had intended to take the cooling unit off the card and clean it up and use new arctic-silver thermal compound but in the process of trying to get everything together I forgot. So in the end I paid the ultimate price for my mistake. If I would have done this simple task my GeForce4 TI would be humming along right now instead of laying in an anti-static body-bag.
So my word of warning to all of you that feel the least bit confident about working on your hardware is to check and see if your video card has a removable heat-sink-fan combo or just heat-sink and if so take a good look at the thermal compound or thermal pad and check its condition. If your thermal grease looks the least bit powdery or pasty you need to replace it ASAP. The same if you have a thermal pad. If it looks discolored or cracked in anyway I recommend going to a good computer shop, electronics shop, or even blasted Radio Shack and get some thermal compound. The best way to remove dried thermal compound it to get a brand new single sided razor blade and gently at a 35 or 45 degree angle slide under the stuff and flake it off. Once it is all cleaned up apply a nice half-pea size dab of thermal grease to you GPU and place the heat-sink back on and slide it around in small circles a few times to work out any air. Same goes for thermal pads, scrape off the pad and make sure it is nice and clean and apply some compound and reassemble everything.
Now be careful about removing the heat-sink as sometimes manufactures use a thermal epoxy to glue the heat-sink to the GPU. If this is the case you should be ok then.
The only reason I am even mentioning this is if this can happen to my card and it is just now 13 months old than you can imagine what can happen to a card that is older or even a newer one. I for one from now on will be checking the thermal compound on my GPU every time I check it on my systems CPU. This stuff does not last forever and it should be changed about once a year. You never hear Dell, HP, Compaq, or even Apple for that matter tell you to keep an eye on your thermal compound do you. They are banking on you not doing this and letting your system cook itself to death.
Ok, I am now stepping down from my soap-box. I need to PM Frank now.

Don. Edwards

BTW,
About those harrd drives. The one that failed on my this year was a Maxtor drive. But I though it would be ok because it was really one of the last Quantum built drives before Maxtor really took over everything. Boy I was wrong. Not any more than six months old and this thing started having problems spinning up and it started to develope bad sectors. Needless to say I WIL NEVER BUY A MAXTOR OF ANY KIND AGAIN!
The drives in my system at present are a 60GB IBM DeskStar, 80GB Seagate Baracuda, and 2 120GB Western Digital J series drives. The ones with the big 8MB cache on board. All these drives have been through multiple installs, defrages, formats, and power outages without a hitch. The next thing I am buying is a UPS "uninteruped power suply" so I can take the power outage problem off the list.

[Darkmiss]

Very sorry to hear of your troubles Don
and a great big thank you to Frank for being able to help out our great friend.

I'm a little worried now too
As I have a Creative Blaster GF4 Ti4600 128, that is only just a year old
Im hopeing it lasts quite a bit longer.

But i will be looking to upgrade it soon any way (in a couple of months)
to go with my new PC upgrade.

[don]

Howdy Don,

Sure sorry to hear of your electronic woes. You sound a bit like the shoemaker -- he makes shoes for everyone else but his kids go shoeless. You're a PC tech, and forgot to put the goo on your own stuff.

Don't feel too bad, our local custom PC shop forgot to take one of the two plastic pieces off of the lump of stuff they put on the heat sink for my new AMD 1.3 GHz, a couple years ago, and it didn't last more than 30 or 45 minutes <laughing>. Yes, they replaced it free of charge and *I* took off the heat sink when I got it back, cleaned it up, and used Arctic Silver.

Thank you for sharing the tip about checking the goo on your heatsinks every year. Yes, this stuff is more important than the CPU, heatsink, and cooling fans all put together. Why? Because without it, your stuff is toast!

Frank, you are a gentleman and a scholar! Thank you for providing Don with a replacement graphics card. This truly is the most awesome group of forum folks I've ever had the pleasure of hanging out with.

Hope you're back up and running soon Don!

-Don G.

[maxim]

I'm glad to hear that this will come to an (almost) good end.

When I read the initial post, first things that came into my mind where a possible bad powerline (something like failureous currents on ground wire, or unconnected ground wires, due to wrong installations by service personal) or static electricity caused by some floor coverings (even wood panels with transparent plastic finish) or cats - I've watched those kind of 'hot spots' that caused death of electronic components in dozents - but it turned out to be 'simply' bad luck.

It's interesting what you said about the thermal compound issue. I myself had never watched that drying out on components that I examined. Even ten years old heat sinks I disassembled hat a good looking compound on it - well, I didn't watch them in hundreds, maybe only a random effect.
But I wondered at which environmental (outcase) temperature your computers are working. Oregon doesn't seem to be a hot area to me.

greets,

maxim

[Tech Sgt. Chen]

Frank wrote:

I would like to donate a new Nvidia GeForce 4 TI or FX card to him. A new 128 MB card costs only about $120 now on TigerDirect.com, and even a 256 MB card is under $200.

A remarkable act of gratitude on your part Frank! The Thanks goes to both of you! I'm not sure of the difference between the TI and FX series
cards, but I also bought my GForce FX 5200 w/256 MBR at Tiger Direct for $99.99!

Don. Edwards wrote:

this TNT card does not run Celestia worth beans

You probably tried this already, but just in case:
Check the Aperture/or equivalent graphics card settings in the System BIOS. It did wonders for me after installing my new card. The old settings were holding it back! Don't forget to check for the constantly updating drivers at the manufacturer's website.
Hope everything works out OK for you Don. Thanks again for the textures!

[Don. Edwards]

maxim,
There are many grades of thermal compound. Lets say you crack open and old radio or stereo receiver and if you check the thermal compound most of the time the that stuff is in good shape because it was of the highest quality. But like everything in this word nothing is made like it once was and that goes for thermal compounds or grease. Manu makers take shortcuts and add solids that help the thermal grease break down over time or in the case of CPUs and GPUs they get hot enough to boil there oils in the compound and they start to evaporate. As I said the better thermal compounds on the market won't do this unless they are very stressed. But most of the time that little pack of thermal greases that comes with heatsink-fan combos is just garbage. A sure sign that it is cheap is that when you go to squeeze it out of the package it is already starting to separate. That is that you see some oil come out of the package ahead of the main portion of the grease. Or if the grease comes out with the consistency of toothpaste you have a pretty good idea that this stuff is of the el-cheapo variety and doomed to dry out in no time at all. A good thermal compound should be very smooth and have a consistency of say sour cream but if you put it on your fingers it will fill very viscous. These are the style of thermal compounds that last the longest and are the most stable. There are some very high quality thermal compounds such as the one I motioned above, Arctic Silver that are very good for CPUs and GPUs. They were created from the beginning to handle and transfer the heat that these components put out.
I can't tell you how many times I have opened a customers computer because of it crashing allot to find it completely full of dust bunnies and then to check the CPU cooler and find that the thermal compound had turned to chalk. No wonder there computer crashes all the time.
I feel it is just a good idea to check of this I the computer owner is confident about messing around in there machine.

Tech Sgt. Chen,
Lets face facts here. The TNT2 chipset just can not do what I need it to do.
With only 16mb of VRAM it can't handle any big textures, it can't use .dds textures, there is no specular lighting effects. I can't even get a bumpmap to work. As for drivers I always check the NVidia site so I always have the newest drivers as they come out. So drivers are not the issue. It is the age of the TNT2 chip and the lack of VRAM on the card.

Don. Edwards

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Everyone,
I thought I would give everyone an update as to what is going on. Frank has graciously purchased a very nice eVGA GeForce FX 5900SE 128MB video card for me. It arrived yesterday. But upon opening the package I found that all the drivers, software, and games CDs were missing as was the DVI adapter. I can only point the finger at Tiger Direct as they opened the box to put some ads inside the box along with an AOL cd and a bunch of other junk that I am sure eVGA would not have put in. Needless to say I was pissed off about this. I have contacted Tiger over this and eVGA is next on the list. If worst comes to worst I will have to send the card back for an exchange. But I do not want to do that. I downloaded the newest drivers from NVidia so drivers are of course covered. But all the software packages that Frank paid for with this card have to, and must be delivered to me or else. I chose eVGA because of all the positive write-ups I read about the company. I do not think it was eVGA but Tiger that is responsible about this screw-up.
Now I have installed the card but I am having some issues. This card is supposed to be twice as fast as my TI4600 was. Well I am not seeing anything near this. The card is performing like my brothers MX440 64MB card. Now I am almost sure it is not the card. I am pretty sure it is my system. Either my AGP slot and circuitry was damaged do to the TI4600's failure or it is my XP install. I am leading towards my install of XP as I have methodically gone through and removed all my old drivers for both video and system level chipset drivers and reinstalled everything several times now to no see no improvement at all. So now I am going to do a fresh install on another drive and then test Celestia's performance with the card. If it don’t at least match the TI4600 than I have to assume it the machine and I will have to try moving to a 2.4GHz Celeron I am trying to sell. If the card works on this system than I will be moving over to this as my main system and than sell off the AMD based system. I always used Intel in the passed and this was my first AMD based system. I had a few issues in the beginning that made for a shaky start. So I wasn't too impressed with the AMD/NVidia Nforce2 chipset from the get go. But things did get better with new bios releases. Now I have remembered that I popped a breaker earlier in the day the card went down so it is possible that this power loss has caused all this trouble for me from the beginning. Although I have lost power in the past many times and never had a problem with hardware. I have had a power outages take down an install of Windows (any version) but never any hardware. But there is always a first time for everything, and would be just my luck.
So look here for and update as to what’s going on with my system and news that I am up and running at full speed and power again.
Wish me luck!

Don.

[Don. Edwards]

Good news!
It is my install of Windows XP that is causing the problem. The hardware all works fine. Actually the card flies. I was able to throw several large textures at it and use 8x anti-aliasing and still use Celestia ok. Although using the 8x setting does slow the frame-rate down some.
So as soon as Frank and I figure out how to get either Tiger or eVGA to send me my missing drivers, software, and complimentary game Call of Duty, I should be up and texture crunching again very soon.
Stay tuned.

Don. Edwards

[Matt Mcfarlane]

Hard Disk Drive, Care and Maintence:
Make Sure To Defragment Your Hard Drive After more than 200 mb of data has been copied.
And Hard Drives fail not becuse of not defragmenting, its becuse there is no proven method of preserving a Hard Drive's contents.
Your Hard Drive is a large magnet, The data begins to age and as it is moved around the drive and defragmented and moved to the front of the drive sectors it begins to go corrupt, there is no way to stop this, my harddrive tipically lasts 4-5 months before it needs the OS reloaded,
BUT THATS LIFE, Speed Limits, Parking Tickets, and windows

[Harry]

Hard Disk Drive, Care and Maintence:
Make Sure To Defragment Your Hard Drive After more than 200 mb of data has been copied.
And Hard Drives fail not becuse of not defragmenting, its becuse there is no proven method of preserving a Hard Drive's contents.
Your Hard Drive is a large magnet, The data begins to age and as it is moved around the drive and defragmented and moved to the front of the drive sectors it begins to go corrupt, there is no way to stop this, my harddrive tipically lasts 4-5 months before it needs the OS reloaded,
BUT THATS LIFE, Speed Limits, Parking Tickets, and windows

I don't want to sound rude, but this simply isn't true. Data on HDs doesn't age, at least not within a few years under normal conditions. You don't have to defragment to keep it intact. If you periodically have to reload the OS, than you either have faulty hardware, or you have software problems. But this is getting really offtopic,

Harald

[Don. Edwards]

Matt Mcfarlane,
I work as a Computer Tech and everything you have said is, shall I say, WRONG!
The data on a hard drive can be just as srong and viable 10 years from now as the day it was written as long as the drive has not incured any physical abuse. Meaning bumping, dropping, etc.... or getting it to close to a very strong magnetic field such as a large speaker magnet.
The main reason a hard drive has a total failure these days is due to one thing, HEAT. Most computers from the big guys do not have a good method of moving cool air in and getting the hot air out. Modern hard drives and even older ones can generate great amounts of heat. A 7200RPM drive can oftem get hot enough to cook an egg. I am not kidding we tried this in our shop for the pure fun of it. It took a while but we were able to cook egg on the top of a Seagate Baracuda 80GB hard drive. So if the drive is putting out that kind of heat and you are not getting it out of your computer than were is it going. No where, it is just sitting there cooking your hard drive to premature death. And those are the facts as to why most drives fail. The other is simply shoddy workmanship such as Fugitsu's 6GB drives from a couple of years back as well as IBM's short stint of bad 75GB drives just over a year and a half ago.
As a profesional in the computer bussiness the main reason for data coruption on a computer is the user themself. By not doing not doing simply system wide data protection such as regular defrags to keep your data toghether, that is what a defrag is for, not for restoring data, Using a utility like Norton Utilies to do system wide registry checks and clean-ups, by loading and unloading of software and not doing it the proper way, not using a good virus protection program, a good fire-wall program to keep the hackers out.
And as a profesional you may ask me what is the main culprets of data loss and virus infection on a computer. Four simple words,
O N L I N E - P O R N and F I L E - S H A R R I N G.
I can't tell you how many machines come in infected or corupted and it all leads us to fine there system is loaded with porn, porn dial-up programs, porn site cookies that are programed to open other sites, and of course getting viruses through all of these file sharring programs.
The second biggy is simply the user not knowing what the heck they are doing. This causes most of the OS failures I see. I have installed over 300 installs of Windows 98, 98SE, ME last year alone not including my last count of 17 installes of XP last year. We didn't have very many XP reinstalls last year because I had just got the owner to start excepting XP based machines in for service. He didn't think I could fix them, I proved him wrong and had to train him how to work with XP and Win2000Pro.
As far as stating that you can't run your system more than 4 or 5 months without a re-install, that all depends on a few things.
If you are using Windows 9x, ME than a re-install or what we in the bussiness call a "Dirty-Install" evry six months is expected and is almost a standing rule. A "dirty install" is what is also called and upgrade install. This means you re-install Windows right on top of your older install keeping all your settings and not breaking the conections to all your programs. If a "Dirty Install" doesn't fix your system than you have to move to the old tried and true "Format & Install". This should only be needed if you got a nasty virus or the above install method doesn't work.
Back when I used Windows 98 I did a "Dirty Install" every month just to keep things in line.
With Windows 2000 Pro and Windows XP Pro & Home that isn't really needed. These operating systems are much better at keeping the regitry cleaned up and as long as you use the NTFS file system instead of FAT32 you are not going to loose data in a power outage or if the system crahed.
If you use the FAT32 files system with Win2k or XP and you have a power failure or a total system crash you are going to some data loss and it can't be recovered unless you are using a thrd party utility. The NTFS file system is self repairing/healing. If you have a power outage or system crash the file system is able to repair the damaged files because NTFS keeps a record of what goes were and when it last saw it there. It is as close to what is called a Journaling File system as Windows can have at this point. Not to mension the System Restore program built into XP.
Also if things in XP do get buggy most people are under misconception that the have to format and re-install everything from scratch.
This simply is not true. There is a very simple way to do the old style "Dirty Install" method with XP and it works even better than it ever did under Windows 9x. This is getting very long winded so I am not going into all the steps needed to do this. If you want to now how than PM me and I can send you all the instructions as to how to do this. This is an undocumented way to install XP and very few people know that this was even posible. And yes if you install with this method your programs at least 95% of them will still work just as before. It is very helpfull for those that do allot of interface tweaking like I do.
As this thread was started about the death of my GeForce4 TI 4600 I can believe anyone would think a hard drive problem could cause my video card to go out. Only if the hard drive's systemboard shorted out and caused the whole system; Motherboard, video, sound ect.. would that be posible. And believe me it is but that is not what happened in my case.

Here is part of what I wrote to another member about this in a PM.

Now as for the GeForce4 TI 4600, I stopped and gave allot of thought as to why this happened. What I realised is that this card really has had some pretty harse use over the last year. When I had it in my P3 system I had the entire system overclocked. The CPU was running at 1.5GHz in a 150MHz frontside bus. That put the AGP slot in overclock as well. To the tune that it was running at 88MHz and not the standard 66MHz. Not really to good although the card never gave me any sign of troube. Then when I built the present system I was going to clean off the TI's heatsink-fan and GPU and use Arctic-Silver thermal compound. Well I forgot. Now I did over clock the new system. But it has seperate setting for each bus so the AGP slot and subsystem was not being overclocked while the CPU and Memory were being overclocked. They aren't at this time because of the power issue. I'm not that crazy. A new PSU and I will have the system up and runnig back at its old speed again. Also the same day the card started to show signs of getting buggy I had poped a breaker by using an electric space heater. We were having that freaky cold spell with all the snow and ice so it was needed. So here we have three things that contributed to the death of the card. First in its early use it was being overclocked for about six months, second, the failure on my part to upgrade the thermal compound, third and what I feel now is the real reason, the breaker kicking out. As I believed I said something about the power failure in an earlier post.

Well that should cover the issue of the TI 4600 and why its life was shorter than it should have been. No product is ever perfect. I just seems I am always the one to fine the one with the fault somewhere. I believe it all boils down to a bad power capacitor on the GeForce4 Ti 4600 as the thing to point to. I may test me theory on this in the future by replacing all the power capacitors and seeing if the card returns to running healthy. If and when I do this I will let everyone know the results. As for now, I have textures to crunch and an Add-On to get back to work on.

Don. Edwards

[Darkmiss]

Good news!
It is my install of Windows XP that is causing the problem. The hardware all works fine. Actually the card flies. I was able to throw several large textures at it and use 8x anti-aliasing and still use Celestia ok. Although using the 8x setting does slow the frame-rate down some.
So as soon as Frank and I figure out how to get either Tiger or eVGA to send me my missing drivers, software, and complimentary game Call of Duty, I should be up and texture crunching again very soon.
Stay tuned.

Don. Edwards

This is great news Don I'm really glad your machine and card are back to full spec once again.

So out comes the Whip again........ Back to work....... (Crack) (Crack)

And once again thanks to Frank for helping Don
I just wish i was in a position to help out myself, but I am not