Re: my video card is possessed

2009-04-04 Thread Euan Clark
I've noticed increased heat issues on both my GPUs  on both XP & Gentoo 
- I think latest nvidia drivers push the cards harder (PhysX?)  - they 
were passive cooling only so I dropped another fan in the box pointed 
across the cards and the issues have gone.



Aidan Gauland wrote:

Hi,

 I upgraded from Debian etch to lenny over a week ago.  Shortly 
thereafter, my system's display started freezing after a few minutes 
of use: the only thing that does not get affected is the cursor in X; 
I couldn't even get to a virtual console.  But I could shut it down by 
pressing the power button (which seems to be equivalent to running 
"shutdown -h now").  I uninstalled all xorg drivers, except for vesa; 
this seems to keep my system stable, but I still get the freezing 
sometimes when I shutdown from within X.  (Quick summary of that 
oddness: *everything* in X freezes, except for the cursor; and I can't 
do *anything*, not even get to a virtual console, except for shut down 
(*NOT* a hard reset) by pressing the power button on my box.)


 Now things start resembling Steven King's 1408.  I installed Antix 
Mepis, because it describes itself as a distro for old hardware, and I 
assumed that I had found a bug in the nv xorg driver (I'm using an old 
(it's for AGP) nVidia card) that would be patched in a distro for old 
hardware.  After going through the installation process and 
configuring my new system, it froze, just as before, while Synaptic 
was getting the repository indexes.


 So I went back to etch.  A *FRESH INSTALLATION* of etch.  And it 
froze... while Synaptic was getting the repository induces.


 All of this was much, much more painful than it sounds.  I'm *now* 
using Debian lenny with the vesa driver.  I *was* using Debian etch 
with nVidia's non-free driver, and it was very stable.


 Does anybody have any advice?  Please?  I'm now thinking (after etch 
froze) that something has happened to my video card.  And I'm a little 
worried that it will get worse.


 Oh, yeah, and a while ago when I was using etch, some characters (it 
looks like it's always the same ones) on the screen during boot time 
(when it's in plain vga mode) would turn into a vertical bar character 
(this -> '|').  It still happens, and to more characters than when it 
started (i.e. it's gotten worse).  So, again, taking all of this into 
consideration, I think my video card is on its way out, and needs to 
be replaced.


Thanks,
Aidan







Re: my video card is possessed

2009-04-04 Thread Steve Holdoway
On Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:40:13 +1200
Aidan Gauland  wrote:

[snip]
Sounds to me like the fan's failed...


-- 
Steve Holdoway 


my video card is possessed

2009-04-04 Thread Aidan Gauland

Hi,

 I upgraded from Debian etch to lenny over a week ago.  Shortly thereafter, 
my system's display started freezing after a few minutes of use: the only 
thing that does not get affected is the cursor in X; I couldn't even get to a 
virtual console.  But I could shut it down by pressing the power button (which 
seems to be equivalent to running "shutdown -h now").  I uninstalled all xorg 
drivers, except for vesa; this seems to keep my system stable, but I still get 
the freezing sometimes when I shutdown from within X.  (Quick summary of that 
oddness: *everything* in X freezes, except for the cursor; and I can't do 
*anything*, not even get to a virtual console, except for shut down (*NOT* a 
hard reset) by pressing the power button on my box.)


 Now things start resembling Steven King's 1408.  I installed Antix Mepis, 
because it describes itself as a distro for old hardware, and I assumed that I 
had found a bug in the nv xorg driver (I'm using an old (it's for AGP) nVidia 
card) that would be patched in a distro for old hardware.  After going through 
the installation process and configuring my new system, it froze, just as 
before, while Synaptic was getting the repository indexes.


 So I went back to etch.  A *FRESH INSTALLATION* of etch.  And it froze... 
while Synaptic was getting the repository induces.


 All of this was much, much more painful than it sounds.  I'm *now* using 
Debian lenny with the vesa driver.  I *was* using Debian etch with nVidia's 
non-free driver, and it was very stable.


 Does anybody have any advice?  Please?  I'm now thinking (after etch froze) 
that something has happened to my video card.  And I'm a little worried that 
it will get worse.


 Oh, yeah, and a while ago when I was using etch, some characters (it looks 
like it's always the same ones) on the screen during boot time (when it's in 
plain vga mode) would turn into a vertical bar character (this -> '|').  It 
still happens, and to more characters than when it started (i.e. it's gotten 
worse).  So, again, taking all of this into consideration, I think my video 
card is on its way out, and needs to be replaced.


Thanks,
Aidan