DescentBB

System specs:
- Intel P4 2.8 GHZ w/ hyperthreading CPU
- ATI Radeon 9800 128 MB AGP video card
- 1 GB Corsair PC-3200 (DDR-400) RAM (CL-2)
- Soyotech P4I865PE Plus DRAGON 2 motherboard
- Maxtor SATA 7200 RPM 60 GB hard drive
- Creative Soundblaster Live sound card
- Onboard 10/100 NIC
- Antec 300W power supply
- Generic floppy drive
- Generic CD burner drive
- Windows XP Professional (SP2 + fully updated)
- Antivirus, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Regrun all installed, updated and set to run regularly.
- Latest BIOS update installed

The system has been running fine for over a year. A thunderstorm hit us out of nowhere and rebooted the machine (yes, it's on a surge protector ).

Since then, the video is fine on boot, but after a short while, the display becomes garbled and can only be fixed by rebooting.

The first thing I did, obviously, was swap out monitors, but it did the same thing. Next, I replaced the video card with the same model, but it did the same thing. Next, I investigated the drivers (uninstalled an re-installed), but it did the same thing. Next, I figured something might be wrong with Windows, but I ran a test this morning by loading up DOS with a boot disk, and the same thing happens, which makes me believe it's the hardware.

Any ideas on what should I do next? Power supply? Motherboard?

Thanks,
V

hmmm, I wanna say run memtest, but I donno if that will help. Tho it could tell you if there is a problem with the motherboard, got a cheap old PCI video card somewhere?

I put in a new power supply based off this:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBA ... tionID=948

I also grabbed a new motherboard, just in case.

Will post updates.

Swapping monitors would be the absolute last thing I'd try. Why is it "obvious" to swap it first?

The specs scream "PSU" to me - so tell me - did replacing it fix the problem?

I'd remove the sound card. See what that does. All a Soundblaster Live! will do is slow you down.

good chances for mobo death. had similar problems a year ago with constant memory access problems after a thunderstorm, which set the computer off due to power fluctuation.

The monitor is really, really old. I got it for $1 at a company auction (plus 5 others, 1 has already died).

The new 350W Antec power supply seems to have fixed the issue. Thanks all.

(P.S. It's not my system, so I don't really care what's in it.)