graphics card 'stops responding'

ok, I AM NOT a techie, and my husband says that he doesnt have time to figure this out (even though he is one ).

We built our own computer for my gaming rig. This was 3 years ago (well almost)....I know some of the specs, others you will need to tell me where to look to give you the information to help.
The problems (which may or maynot be related).
Every once in a while the computer will just stop---the mouse and screen freeze and the only solution is to hold down the power button.....and there is NOTHING in the error log about it nadda, zip, bubkiss.
Recently my sapphire graphics card had been giving me the blue screen saying my ati2dvag was stuck in an infinite loop and I should update the drivers, weelll--there are no newer ones than the ones I had, but seeing as my card was quite old (the radeon 1600 series ) I thought it was time to upgrade.
so we bought me a newer card....a vision tek radeon 3650 (which even says guildwars on the front of the box)......however; after we got it installed and I was playing guildwars....my screen would go black and I would get an ATI screen telling me that my graphics thingy had stopped responding and it was resetting me ...and did I want to send an error report or not about it.... and uhm, we didnt input any setting when we started so it was at the original ones, so I am confused about that as well.

so help me figure out what's up with my graphics card, and whether or not my other problem is related (or just bad hardware to begin with).

the specs I do know:
its dual core, ati and I am running windows xp service pack 2 (dont remember if I did 3 yet or not).

so tell me what other info you need and where to find it, cause I have no idea what the problem is other than my graphics card isnt working right (kinda like going to the doctor and saying I dont feel well).

so HELP!!!

ati 1600 shouldnt have a problem running guildwars maybe its your physical memory thats bad google memtest and run it

try updating your graphic card drivers.

the drivers I have are from feb 2009....none newer found.
I had no problems running guildwars with my 1600---the problems I had I mentioned, the blue screen and the ocassional freeze (one of which is still occurring with the newer card too).
I believe I have 1 gig memory, and it works just fine----even after the ati screen pops up I can continue to play guildwars just fine (with the same fps as well).

With the 3650 card - does this only happen when you are playing Guild Wars? If this occurs during other games/programs it could be a poorly seated video card, esp. if it occurs after the computer has been running for awhile.
If that is the case I would do the following:

Uninstall the 3650 video card and drivers. Reboot your computer with onboard graphics (integrated - ASSUMING that your motherboard has this). Install the 3650 video card again, making sure it is well seated and that the power connectors for it are snug. Install the drivers that come on the CD with the new video card. Test it out ingame and during regular computer usage.

If that sounds too "technical" for you then tell your lazy hubby that I said to have him do it.

I think i had the same problem with one of my old cards, is it something to do with a VPU Recovery?

Would you be able to screen shot or print screen the error screen next time?

...so far only happens on guildwars (though I dont play ANY other games on my computer, only use it for firefox stuff, paint, playing music etc).

Have also gotten the total black screen when playing guildwars and the only way to get rid of it is to X out (knowing where the X is with a black screen is a shot in the dark, but). We are going to uninstall all of the drivers and try reinstalling them, hubby is working extra (bunch of servers died at work---that is much more important than me playing guildwars since he is the only employed person here right now).....hope to get to it this weekend. The scrolling after the black screen is very slow/rippled....had to just restart the whole computer (was too hard to do anything). Am working on a backup computer for a while (dont want to mess with my rig right now), and there are no power connectors for this card either.

took a screenie of it--the vpu thing.

The usual suspects...

well to get things more clearly: WHEN does it crash?
allways after a while?
some AREAS?
just a wild guess.. you can run around outside ratasum for ages,
and in center of kaineng/shiros palace/underworld it goes boom?

when gw behaves spooky my usual suspect is the power supply unit
especially if your husband is a techie, you can try the following:

Get OLD drivers (the OLDEST just supporting your card).
Since Guildwars IS an old game it is VERY unlikely the solution for such problems lie in NEWER drivers, it is more likely newer drivers MESS up. That has been so since 10 years when my gaming carreer started and hasn`t changed till now
Rule of thumb:
new game: update driver.
old game: downgrade driver.

I would recomend the oldest omega driver available, since in my experience they are more stable.

If the problem still exists, my next guess would be the powersupply not being able to deliver the power -> resulting in a nonresponding card. Havn`t had a ATI card since in a while, but it might be the catalyst recovery stops the system in time instead of just crashing it to reboot.
things that help in such situations are... get a new powersupply (even with gw forcing you to get a PSU of 1000W *DOH*.
or.. underclock the card. underclock it by far.
a quicktest for that to work (if it works then thats the bug quite sure, if not it might still be it: play GW in windowed mode at ca 200*200px (smallest window available, even if it causes headache and you cant call it gaming. the small window reduces GPU resources and thus prevents energy falloff).

The Radeon 1600 series and the 3650 both require a 350 watt PSU, so if it works with one it should work with the other too, unless the PSU is going bad, which is possible.

It really sounds like either a driver problem or a bad GPU (hard to think that a brand new GPU is bad, but it does happen from time to time).

it happens where ever---I walked outside of grotto...or right outside of port sledge, wasnt doing anything...boom crash.
just got a new power supply last year---killed the old one (new one is 400 or 450 I believe and external as well)


welll....we got rid of the old drivers, control center etc....put new drivers back on and the system tray (instead of the totallly useless control center) and I have started playing again---so far no crashes, but sometimes it happens right off, other times it was after a bit....so we shall see and let you know (I give it a few days of my playing and then if nothing happens I will say its fixed).
thanks for the help so far all!

An external PSU?

I'm strangely intrigued...

What is an external PSU is that just like external DVD Burners? :S

wellllll.....cards seems to be working ok, I do get the occasional freeze/black screen, but the game still runs (as well as the computer ) afterwards, however; my dsl has been down the last few days so I have not been playing to continue testing

yes an external power supply for my computer, the one it came with was not enough and its a pretty small case, so we just got a big powerful one and let it sit outside the case---hubby has the same set up on his computer as well, it keeps some of the heat down and such. (hubby also has external hard drives, dvd drives, etc external---not much IN his case anymore....).
So now that my dsl is back (though they say again we are on a temporary line) I will continue to test-----

that's... not an external psu. that's just a psu not in the case.... wait, that IS technically external isn't it :S

i do know bestbuy sells these power booster thingies. they sit in the drive bay and allows you a dedicated 12V rail for graphics. too bad they cost about the same as a good quality PSU.

the power supply we got was not intended to go in a case---so it is an external power supply (its too big for my case, might fit into one of them huge tower cases though).

do you need to keep the case open when using the PSU? if so, that PSU is an internal (basically a standard) PSU. in fact, there are no such thing as a truly external PSU (and no, my laptop's power adaptor does not count).

the largest PSU you'll find is a standard ATX form-factor PSU, which will fit in any standard sized case. and no, that doesn't mean one of those gigantic ones; any case that accepts an ATX motherboard will do.

systems like the slimline PC require a smaller form-factor PSU. you've probably just bought one that's too big for it.

do you need to keep the case open when using the PSU? if so, that PSU is an internal (basically a standard) PSU. in fact, there are no such thing as a truly external PSU (and no, my laptop's power adaptor does not count).

the largest PSU you'll find is a standard ATX form-factor PSU, which will fit in any standard sized case. and no, that doesn't mean one of those gigantic ones; any case that accepts an ATX motherboard will do.

systems like the slimline PC require a smaller form-factor PSU. you've probably just bought one that's too big for it.

my case has slots to put the cables thru with no problems, like my husband's case we made from plexiglass and the spot where the old on/off button was was large enough to fit the cables thru.....these power supplies are meant to sit outside the case- they are like the external dvd and servers---all sealed and nice package/case...like its going to be seen, not stuffed into a case (ok...asked hubby, he says we are very forward in our thinking about this, heck I wanted a small case in 2003 when there were none, now I find tons of them). the power supply is about 4" x 6" x 6" waaaay too big for my case (heck its bigger than my motherboard!).

mATX motherboards are 10" x 10", so unless you are using one of those picoATX mobos, then your PSU is definitely smaller than your mobo.

btw, 6x6x4 inches is a standard PSU size. yes, you'll often find fancy PSUs with nice colors and lights, but they are still for internal use.

my whole case is only 12" x 12" and yes my motherboard is only 6" x 6" (barely)....and the power supply is made for external stuff like back up drives and external hard drives and dvd external drives....


back to my reason for this thread: back where we started. Played for a while today in prophecies desert area....one hour went ok, next hour --freeze...play ok for a bit (few minutes), then freeze--black screen, and it never came back, had to reboot the computer as the mouse wouldnt minimize gw (no mouse on the screen so I was guessing)....tried it 2 more times. no go, finally tried in window mode....about 1/4 screen size was able to play then, made it a bit bigger and able to read the menues etc and able to play....so not sure whats up with it.

read what i wrote.
do you have factions? go to the centre of kaineng in fullscreen... it should go boom.
if that happens you have a "testing area".
underclock the card. have fun.
or downgrade drivers. the larger the gap between cardproduction and driverdate -> the worse.

statisticaly you could say stability follows a graph like a gaussian bell: first unstable, two to four months later perfect, then crap.

cosy - you have one of those little shuttle cases with the handle on top right?

Anyways - I hate to ask an obvious question, but have you done a System Restore? A good virus scan, with a registry editor, and a fresh install of GW might help too. (assuming you already have tried various drivers etc...

Something else to try, since your case is (if i understand it correctly) tiny, your card could be overheating... GW does not like heat, more so than any other game I've played in fact. Can you run a program to give us the internal temps of the components in your PC? For that I suggest Everest Ultimate, best free program I've run across.....

update.
Ghost, yes I have factions, I went to Kaineng and it would take about 10 minutes for it to crash there, so yes thanks I have been using it as a crash area (in 800x600 it took only 5 minutes to crash).
We spent lots of time tweaking the drivers, updating, downgrading, went to omega drivers (those were probably the best one we tested, but still the crashes occurred after the 10 minute mark).
Elder, no I dont have a shuttle---that ones dem are 8x8x12 (like a mailbox), mine is 12x12x4 or so....more like stacking 2 average sized laptops on top of each other. No heat is not an issue, dust is (and I have a full new set of cans of air next to the rig).

Heat tests came back pretty good----the highest the card got while on a full run with tons of stuff running in the background (for testing purposes) was 61C. The cpu only got to about 50C

well so the update, after talking to lots of experts (and surfing) we decided to just give up on the ati card altogether and went to a nvidia 8400gs---got it last night and even though it runs pretty hot (72C was the max) it made it past the crash stage of Kaineng (and then another 20minutes) with no crashes, played for another 2 hours with lots of stuff going on in the background and still no crashes----so the consensus right now is that my rig and the ati were not completely compatible, however; I still plan to do more testing to make sure that we finally solved this (and didnt just exchange one set of problems for another)....so I might update this thread again.

But for now, thanks everyone for your help, suggestions and just being there when I needed someone!