gpu problem or Vista explorer bug? [thumbnail warning]

[Marin85]

The problem occurs always while (and only while) browsing a particular 50+ GBs folder with pics. This folder has probably a few hundreds subfolders full of pics viewed as large or extra large icons, and all those subfolders are viewed as large icons themselves (and have thumbnails as pic folders in Vista). So I can imagine the whole thing, using fancy Vista features, is somewhat heavy for the system, but I´m not sure where the problem comes from. When this happens, in general I´m not able to take a screenshot of the desktop, with the few exceptions in the thumbnails above (yes, this is indeed how my Vista desktop looked). Few times I was able to restore normal functionality by restarting explorer and windows manager, but most of the time it doesn´t help. It doesn´t happen always, I couldn´t find any particular relation to some other software (like Photoshop).

I only hope that it´s not the gpu going bad. I tested it with PC-Doctor (only 2-3 passes) and it didn´t report any problems. I also tried a BurnIn test for short time, but I didn´t want to let it run for longer time because I need the laptop this week.

So, guys and gals, what do you think?

Thanks in advance

Marin


EDIT:I posted in the general hardware forum because my main concern is the gpu going bad.

[GomJabbar]

I have seen something similar to your screenshot on the left. I believe this is the fault of buggy software or video drivers. You can try turning off video acceleration to see if that helps (I believe you should have that option in Display Properties).

I believe a faulty GPU will cause multicolor artifacts to appear on the screen.

See following: http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html

[ajkula66]

It does not smell like a GPU problem to me...

Given that you've got a V5200 which is a fairly hot-running card, you may want to try this: press the machine (not physically, obviously ) hard, get the card really hot, shut it down. Repeat 10 times.

If the card is on its way out, artifacts that GomJabbar was referring to will show up, no questions asked, but I doubt it.

Good luck.

[RealBlackStuff]

You refer to picture folders, but your thumb-prints show a problem with your Music folder or with Winamp.
Is that coincidence, having loads of music AND loads of images open at the same time?

[Marin85]

Thanks for your replies!

I should have mentioned I tried out different drivers (Lenovo driver, latest desktop driver from ATI modded to install on a laptop, WDDM driver from M$ update). The problem appears with all of them. Next time I´ll try to turn off the video acceleration, which btw reminds me that it could be also the Aero that is acting up here...

I´m gonna "press" the card very thoroughly next week when my external HD arrives. Yes, the FireGL 5200 is running indeed quite hot but has never failed me so far. We will see (lucky me, I´m still under warranty).

You refer to picture folders, but your thumb-prints show a problem with your Music folder or with Winamp.
Is that coincidence, having loads of music AND loads of images open at the same time?

Interesting point. I believe I had the issue without winamp running too, but I´ll check this out. Actually, the problem starts while browsing this particular pic folder, but then it affects everything on the screen (like winamp or paint or any other program/folder).

Thanks again,

Marin

[GomJabbar]

I notice my ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 w/64Mb VRAM uses up to 255Mb of system RAM, for a total of 319Mb available. My guess is; if any app writes over that reserved system RAM, that might cause the problem. On rare occasions I have seen an open app window such as Winamp in your screenshot erase any part of the screen it was dragged across. I doubt if Winamp itself is the culprit here. But I am no expert. These are just my opinions.

[beGi]

It looks like faulty video drivers to me (but unlikely if you tried 3 of them)...

Go to safe mode and try to see what happens...

Although that reminds me on page file overload\swap delay (but that shouldn't be the case here since you have 4 gb ram)... I remember that you said (somewhere) that you use ramdisk, and (if so) maybe that causes you problems...

[Marin85]

Wow, I didn´t know that an application can overwrite the reserved system memory for the card. Under Vista the latest drivers can reserve up to ~1300 MB of the system memory , this would mean that anything that requires more video memory can indirectly cause something like this... Yup, I also have seen winamp "erasing" parts of the screen, but that was under XP with explorer.exe stopped responding. I should check out this winamp thing in more details.

Safe mode is good idea. I´ll try that if the problem appears with hardware acceleration/Vista aero turned off. This way I hope I´ll be able to nail down the source more or less. In the end this could be well some Vista explorer bug.

Currently I don´t use RAMdisk under Vista, but I definitely wanted to try it out, but I don´t have time right now to play with such things. From what I read, RAMdisk is definitely an interesting concept though.

Marin