Hi Guys,
I'm just posting this up in case someone else has the same problem - it may save them 3 hours of pointless messing about.
Yesterday evening the main HTPC just decided to shut down whilst the TV was playing. "Hmmmm, that's odd" I thought. I restarted it and just got the BSOD on windows startup. Tried again and the Win7 repair screen came into play. Anyway, after 2 hours of entering 'safe mode' and disabling components and reinstalling drivers the problem had still not gone away. There was no pattern to what was happening.
At this point I had the HTPC box out on the living room floor with the lid off and I happened to put my hand near to the graphics card and found it was really pumping out some heat. Got it!! The card is overheating - this explains the odd behaviour. It was then I noticed that the small cooling fan on the heatsink was not turning. I removed the card, removed the cooling fan (held in with three small screws) and cleaned and lubricated it. After putting it all back together it now works fine and as it should do now.
I very nearly binned the card thinking it was faulty. I should have bought a passively cooled card
M.
I'm just posting this up in case someone else has the same problem - it may save them 3 hours of pointless messing about.
Yesterday evening the main HTPC just decided to shut down whilst the TV was playing. "Hmmmm, that's odd" I thought. I restarted it and just got the BSOD on windows startup. Tried again and the Win7 repair screen came into play. Anyway, after 2 hours of entering 'safe mode' and disabling components and reinstalling drivers the problem had still not gone away. There was no pattern to what was happening.
At this point I had the HTPC box out on the living room floor with the lid off and I happened to put my hand near to the graphics card and found it was really pumping out some heat. Got it!! The card is overheating - this explains the odd behaviour. It was then I noticed that the small cooling fan on the heatsink was not turning. I removed the card, removed the cooling fan (held in with three small screws) and cleaned and lubricated it. After putting it all back together it now works fine and as it should do now.
I very nearly binned the card thinking it was faulty. I should have bought a passively cooled card
M.