Totally lost after a sequel of events

[wither 3]

In device manager, if there is a problem with a device, it will usually have a exclamation mark inside a yellow triangle next to it.

You didn't answer my question.

 

[pappi]

I know about the yellow exclamation marked triangle. I had one on the Infrared Devices for the longest time. I tried to update the driver but it would not take updates. I did not care to fix it then because I never used IR connection but just very recently the yellow mark disappeared... I guess it auto-fixed itself.

The Display Adapters-both Standard VGA and NVidia GeForce- never had the yellow warning. Even when I was updating the drivers, it always said "This device is working properly". I guess the yellow triangle's absence does not automatically mean there is nothing wrong.

 

[wither 3]

The absence of the exclamation marks for the non-functioning card is interesting but I'll not go there.

You didn't answer my question about the boot problem.

 

[Patonb]

Congrats.. You got it

Okay, you had me confused on your setup but I'm set now.

Bear with me as I help a bunch of people at a time, but you did try the original drivers?

I'd really lover to know what your guy did to determine the videocard was broke, help in trouble shooting

If your up to it, I'd really like you to download Ubuntu and run it as a Livecd. It bypasses your hard drive and windows all together. If it works in Linux it should work juist fine in Windows.

 

[pappi]

The reason I ended up reinstalling factory image 4 times was because each time, it was NVidia display device that got installed by default which lasted only for seconds. So on the next installations, I tried another driver(NVidia has three) and no driver worked for more than a minute or so. On the fourth and final installation, I just skipped the NVidia card by clicking the Standard VGA and installing its driver which was always there(Display adapter always had 4 drivers....3 for NVidia and 1 for VGA). With Standard VGA, I am OK. Not great. Just OK. At least I no longer crush and no more BSOD's. Also no 3D games and live TV viewing. I can still view web video streams and missed TV full episodes with zero probs...like usual.

Now, if only one of you could decipher why the booting problems.

By elimination, I got convinced the NVidia card was indeed damaged.

Now, I am still stumped on booting probs. I am not looking forward to the next update that requires re-start.

 

[Patonb]

Here is a driver from last year
Drivers | GeForce

It works on my 9600m gt

Save it, then go into the device manager and uninstall/remove the standard driver.
Boot into safe mode, f8 when booting up and then run the driver. DO NOTR add the 3d crap or updater, just the driver.

Unless you accidently stadic damaged your computer when changing your keyboard, i can't see why it would die.

 

[pappi]

Actually this driver was installed automatically sometime this year, January, I think(at that time I was not aware of its installation). Then, I started having freezing probs which made me search for the cause and that was when I noticed I had NVidia driver listing in the add/remove list of programs which was never there before. And when I checked the Display adapter in Device manager, there was a roll back option which was not there before....so I rolled back to 2010 driver and the problems disappeared. Then I googled that driver and there were entries online about its compatibility problems on some PC's.

I always wondered why this supposedly damaged NVidia card had no problem taking driver updates....because when the Consumer IR device had yellow triangle on it, it would not take driver update. And now I wonder why the yellow mark is gone. ...because I never fixed it. Hmmm....

I also had one device that acquired a new driver from automatic installation that performed worse with the update. Rolling back restored it to normal. Now, I have stopped automatic installation of non-important non-safety updates.

 

[Patonb]

hmm, Nvidia has old drivers in the legacy section. If you want to try the '10 driver.

I never use Microsoft suggested drivers as they are never 100%

 

[pappi]

Yesterday I was able to restart after updates installation 3 separate times and did not encounter any prob. Today out of curiosity, I shut down and cold booted 5 hours later and had no boot prob.

I think my boot problem is over.


Thanks wither3 and Patonbe for your patience...and hanging around. From this thread I learned how to use the snipping tool(I had always wondered what it was) and doing screen shot. Now I'd like to know how to hack.

 

[Patonb]

Wouldn't we all like to hack....

Enjoy your new found knowledge and teach others how to snip!

 

[wither 3]

I'm gladyou resolved the problem. i didn't look at your other thread to see if you posted the fix. I recommend that you do that since we were dubious that the graphics card was really dead.

 

[pappi]

I am babysitting my 6 year old grandson, David at the moment and in a few minutes I left him with my laptop while I was in the kitchen preparing dinner, he fixed my computer so he can play 3D games. I did not know I have these games in my laptop. He has no idea he has just fixed something. He does not know there was something wrong with the laptop.

My son has warned me about his genius with PC. But this is ridiculous. I am now operating with the original GeForce 9600, GT graphic card with absolutely no problem. So maybe my graphic card was not damaged at all?

I asked him what he did. "GrandPa just press stuffs and then wait," was his nonchalant response. I could not get any explanation from him.

Neither can my son. He claims, "David just does these things with PC's...and stuffs". OMG!

 

[Patonb]

Excellent.

I didn't think so either. Who cares what he did because it worked!

Trhanks for the update.

 

[pappi]

What do you think he did? Why it did not take him any time at all?

BTW, these games he is playing are incredibly realistic. I did not know my audio is this great. I did not know my laptop is this awesome.. .all these years. And to think I almost replaced it. I bought it just a few weeks after David was born.

My son warned me not to question David about what he does with electronic gadgets...because he clams up to inquiries. He does not seem to understand people's problems with computers.

And this is scary: My laptop's parental control did not work on him. He just got around it like it does not exist.

 

[Patonb]

Really have no clue unless you can find out what he did. I'd love to know.

You have a fantastic laptop, not top of the line but a lot further up the line than most laptops.

 

[pappi]

Sorry, but it took me three babysitting sessions to get intel from David.

This is how he "fixed" "Buddy".(He denies fixing because "Buddy" was not broken, "just tired". "Buddy" is my laptop's name).

First he flashed BIOS, then updated one of the two cores(processor) and then updated the NVIDIA software/driver. I have no clue how he knows how to do these "stuffs". Yes, he calls everything to do with computer "stuffs", except firewall. He claims his other grandpa(my in-law's 74 yr old father) has very "big firewall", "that's why he does not know how to send e-mail with pictures".

 

[Patonb]

hmm, there may have been a BIOS patch for a bug found in newer drivers.

not sure about the cpu's, again could be a secondary program with Something to do with them, you can't really update a cpu core.

Once the bios was "patched" the driver would have took properly. I looked at the BIOS files on HP, but they were pretty generic definitions, however a few years newer than your laptop.

By the way the BIOS update slipped my mind, and probably should have been done initially.

Again good job by the kid!.

 

[pappi]

I am back to absolutely normal...maybe as good as when I first got my PC 5 yrs ago.

For those who might have the same problems, here are the changes I found in my computer that my grandson did(whether or not any or all are responsible is not clear to me):

(1) Bios was flashed using the same SP file from HP site... installed over existing files.
(2) January 2013 NVIDIA card software/driver I installed early in 2013 was deleted. Current driver is dated 11/2009
(3) All updates I had hidden and never installed were restored and installed.
(4) JAVA, which I had deleted(because of homeland security warnings) was installed(latest update).
(5) Latest flash player was installed(no explanation other than "because")
(6) Open Office was deleted(no expanation). I am back to Microsoft Works.
(7) QuickPlay was never installed ("Don't do it," my grandson admonished without explanation).

I do not know exactly why my PC collapsed. in March. But thanks to my grandson I was prevented from spending $1,287.00 on replacement HP laptop that turned out to be unnecessary. Turned out my graphic card was really never damaged.

 

[Patonb]

Again, yay to him. I'm pretty certain the updating of the bios was what did it. For some reason or other I think your computer had bad feelings about the gpu, And redoing the bios got it thinking straight.

Is #7 actually Quicktime? It's apples video software if it is, and yha I keep it out too.

You should update the video card driver to something newer, just for security reasons.
As for openoffice vs Works, that's your choice.

 

[pappi]

#(7) is QuickPlay which is a program unique to HP Pavilion DV series and which is no longer supported by HP. Prior to collapse, I had huge problem activating it. It was in and out of my system. It also requires TV tuner for live TV viewing very similar to Windows Media Center(...but QP has far more TV channels and other non-TV features).

BTW, I used to freeze on this Forum site. David did something to prevent freezing. Now I get warning that Double-click ad is being blocked and I have an option to allow it). Again, I could not get explanation from him how he did it. But thanks to him, this site does not freeze me anymore.

Does Vista Forum know it tries to download adware?