PC won't boot after GPU fan change attempt

[guinness1983]

Firstly, the fan on my Nvidia 8400gs died about two years ago. Since then I have been purchasing and replacing new fans myself whenever they start to make weird noises or fail so I am quite familiar with the procedure.

Today I went out and bought a fan and tried replacing it when I got home. When i started the PC the new fan did not turn at all and for some reason I thought there was some kind of problem with the voltage so I pulled the fan's plug from the GPU card without turning off the computer. I don't know if it had anything to do with me pulling the plug from the GPU but from then the startup didn't seem right so i turned off the pc, put back the noisy fan that works and started up again.

The Dell logo had some lines and dots going down it as such:http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii207/pistolero983/pc err...G_1489.jpg



Then the little windows loading animation had some gaps in the lines on the bottom part of it: http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii207/pistolero983/pc err...G_1488.jpg http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii207/pistolero983/pc err...G_1490.jpg



After this the screen goes black and there is a quick flash of a blue screen and then it starts over again.

I was able to try F2 for the setup screen and this is what I got:

http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii207/pistolero983/pc err...G_1505.jpg

However the screens on Safe Mode with Networking seem ok, there are none of those lines and dots going down the screen:

http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii207/pistolero983/pc err...G_1501.jpg

http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii207/pistolero983/pc err...G_1494.jpg

I should add that i've had many problems with other fans before and I've tinkered with the gpu a lot, this probably isn't the first time i've pulled the fan plug from the gpu itself while the pc is running. I've also run the pc a few times while the fan was completely stuck and not rotating and i've never had this problem before.
This is the first time this has happened to me. I've had other errors before but nothing like this.

Sorry for the long *** first post but this really sucks

 

[-RockMan-]

Ok, what kind of GPU do you have ATI or nvidia based, what model also ?
Rule 1, never unplug the gpu fan from the video card while it's on or booting up, etc.
Please if you can provide us a link to your cpu fan that you bought and will see if it matches your videos size and measurement accordingly.

As far as your gpu acting up, if you start seing garbage right before you get blue screen of death or god forbid Black screen of death, it's about time you started to look into a new card if thats an option for you.
If it's underwarranty and you haven't voided anything, send that joker right back for repairs with original fan andc heatsink attached to it.

 

[guinness1983]

Thanks for the quick reply. No link to the fan, all generic stuff, 6cm gpu fan. All I know is that they are all 12v from what the guy said.

Anyway, in the eight hours or so since i've posted here's what's happened. I went into SAFE MODE (I also did a lot of research, had lunch, took a quick nap and had dinner) and i uninstalled the driver, after resetting i was finally able to get into regular windows without crashing. Once in regular windows, I still had the generic vga display so i installed the same NVIDIA drivers from 2009. Once i did this I restarted expecting everything to be ok but it went back to crashing once again. I uninstalled the drivers once again got back into regular windows vista and installed an updated driver from 2011 and once again it started crashing.

Now I have removed the video card and I am using the NVIDA 6150 that is connected to the motherboard, it's slow as **** but I am no longer using the 800x600 resolution so I think i've solved it. So I guess that solves the problem then? I'd like input from you guys to verify that it's the card that has the problem not the slot that i connect it to (i think it's called pci slot). But since the pc was able to identify the model of the graphics card after I'm about 90% sure on that.

 

[-RockMan-]

It's probably your graphics card fault and that driver should be a simple fix and for your nvidia 6150.
Go right back to Nvidia driver and support page and find your video card that you own and select which os you have.
Download it and install your video card first, tell it to let it do recommended settings at first.
Once finished, test out a video online such as youtube.com or play a mpeg or avi video on your computer.
Depedening on the size of your monitor, please increase the resolution passed 1024x768 on color settings of 32bits.

If everything goes fine your monitor screen should not flicker, garbale itself or black out.
Do the same procedure for your onboard graphics card and test it out too.

 

[guinness1983]

No probs with the onboard now except for the font and icons being noticeably smaller for some reason. I checked the resolution it was the same as before, the DPI for the text as well...

Anyway I'm going to get a Geforce 210 tomorrow, hopefully everything will run fine and I won't get that reboot problem again with the new video card.

Edit:

I was just thinking, what if I do get the same problem once I installed the new card and driver? Could that indicate a fault in the pci slot or maybe even the motherboard?

 

[patonb]

You can make the icons bigger by holding the ctrl key and scrolling the mouse wheel.

You can borrow any other gpu and try it out first....

 

[guinness1983]

Wow that was cool. I thought that only worked with text on websites and such...

I don't know anyone with a graphics card to spare. Shame, I'm going to have to dip into my Killzone 3/Fight Night Champion budget to buy this stupid card. I'm going to kill that guy who sold me this dodgy fan!


EDIT:

One more thing, I noticed that even when I was no longer able to log in using the 8400gs, the fan still ran and the pc device manager was still able to recognize it. Is that normal even for a "dead" graphics card?

 

[guinness1983]

Looking to find info on GPU fan types, voltages etc...

I recently killed my Geforce 8400gs when i tried replacing it's fan with a dodgy one that didn't even work in the first place.

Anyway, I'm looking to find out what voltage GPU fans use and if they are all the same. I've changed several fans on my gpu card over the past three or four years but I've never really looked into it before.

Also, i've noiced that there are different types of plugs/connectors for these fans. Most of what i've seen are two pin and there are two different sizes. The larger ones tend to have thicker wires and the smaller ones usually have thinner, braided wires. The guy at the store offered to change the plugs (sorry for my lack of technical jargon) around when I found one that would not fit in the power source on my card but I declined thinking maybe there was a reason they are fitted with different size plugs/connectors.

Any input on this would be appreciated. None of the PC sales people here in HK speak enough english to explain it to me.

 

[Peter.Cort]

Re: Looking to find info on GPU fan types, voltages etc...

usually the fan is powered by the card specifically which usually just uses a normal 2 pin, 3 pin or 4 pin, the difference being the 4 pin allows variable speed, 3 pin allows for the output of the RPM's to a program like hwmonitor, and 2 pin as you can guess doesn't have any extra fun capabilities to it. the 3 and 2 pin are at set RPM's.

it doesn't really matter if you have a 4 pin connector in a 2 or 3 pin slot, just make sure that you connect the 12v / 5v wire which is usually the red cable. I think that most fans under like 80mm in size (80mm being a stock cpu fan size / smaller case fan size on a normal atx/matx case) use 5v.

hopefully that answers your question!

 

[Slaymate]

@ guinness1983, I merged your threads, please don't start multiple threads about the same issue.