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First the camera display goes on strike, then the car decides to take two days sick leave, and now my computer decides to kick up a fuss for attention. This is truly getting ridiculous. If anything else breaks down, I’m gonna freak. Back to the matter of the sick computer. The graphics card that I am currently is an old OEM TNT2 with 32MB RAM. The manufacturer is unknown, and there is no way of finding out. It came with WL’s computer assembled 5 years ago. I inherited it after she upgraded to a GeForce 4200 FX. So much for its origins. On to the juicy details.

Symptoms
The display resolution has been giving problems on and off for the past week. I have one of those nifty LCD monitors. When the graphics card output is not suitable for display, the monitor will protect itself by displaying a bouncing message on a black background telling me what the optimum resolution should be.

Now bouncing messages don’t really help at all except to tell us that something’s wrong. It doesn’t give us any avenue whatsoever to go in there and fix the problem. Preferable to a bouncing message would be that the monitor tells the damn graphics card what resolution and refresh it can support and the hardware does the rest. Alternatively, the monitor would do well to moderate, modulate, resize, and readjust the resolution and refresh to suit its needs. However, since technology isn’t yet up to par, we’ll just have to make do with the bouncing message.

When the computer is first started up, everything works fine. However, after an hour or so of use, the monitor will go into the warning mode described above. Doing a hot reboot (e.g. hitting the reset button) does not solve the problem. The resolution does not change back to a viewable one. Doing a cold reboot (e.g. shutting down the computer, counting to ten, powering back on) does not solve it either. The only way to get the display back up is to power down, shut down the mains, and leave the computer to discharge for half an hour (or more) before powering up again.

Suspicious Characters
I have my lineup of suspects, namely the Operating System (Win XP Proffesional), the device driver (Win XP driver for TNT2), the graphics card, the motherboard, and the monitor. I have ruled out the monitor. These are hardy buggers that do not break down that easily. Besides, the symptoms for a broken monitor would be much more persistent. WL suggested that my computer might be infected with a virus. However, I don’t recall any viruses that have the symptoms described. That and the fact that the symptoms suggest a problem that is hardware in nature leads me to rule it out. Additionally I’ve also patched and updated the device drivers and Win XP to no avail, so I’ll take those out of the list as well.

What I’m left with are the graphics card and motherboard. Of the two, I haven’t performed any experiments to rule out or confirm either one. That I will do over the weekend. WL mentioned that she was experiencing something similar prior to her upgrade. However, I don’t know how true her description is or whether they are the same symptoms at all. For one thing, if it was a defective graphics card, I would have experienced this fault long before now. However, having said that, I am inclined to believe that it is the graphics card. The fact of the matter is, I want a new graphics card ;) TNT2, if you’re listening in, your days are numbered.

With any luck, the problem will blow over after a while. I have my doubts though. In fact, the symptoms are becoming more and more frequent. I suppose it is time to upgrade my computer again. It has been, after all, more than three years since its last overhaul.