"Paul" wrote in message
news
Bill Cunningham wrote:
My computer has been booting fine and there's no picture sometimes. I
restart it, sometimes several times. I will get words on the screen as
it's booting that are "fuzzy". IMO I think the video chip is going. It's
never really acted that way til lately. It's 14 yo. I can expect
something

Bill

CRT or LCD ?

Flat screen LCD. A dell monitor. Not very old.

Has the monitor been tested on another computer ?

No not yet.

What shape is the monitor data cable in ? Is it a captive
cable that is permanently fixed on the monitor end ?
Sometimes the male pins on the connector, get pushed back
through the mounting plate. I had that happen once on a VGA.
Modern cables don't tend to do that. DVI aren't likely
to be a problem either. But an older cheesy captive VGA cable might.

If the video card has a fan, you can check that the
fan still runs. (I have an inspection mirror and LED flashlight
I use to check.) Some coolers (like the one on my NVIdia
card) have "channels" leading from the fan blade area,
and those can become blocked.

That's about all the visual check I can suggest.

You can do a visual inspection of the surface
of the video card. A lot of video cards I've looked
at, use polymer caps (sealed top, no "K" stamped
in the metal). And those usually hold up pretty well.

The only way the letters could get "fuzzy", is possibly
a sync problem (sync signal sliced at slightly different
place each time). Maybe the fuzz is only in one
direction or vector when that happens. You would not expect
a "spherical" fuzz pattern around each pixel or something.

when GPUs fail, or when the RAM around the GPU fails,
you can get squares or large "spots" of discoloration.
This might be the misinterpretation of the contents of
video RAM as simple geometric objects. Making a fuzzy
"halo" around a letter, is too complicated. But a sync
slicing failure, might make the letters fuzzy from side to
side.

It's just as likely to be a monitor problem, or a cabling
problem, as an actual GPU failure. And for GPUs, fan failure
and meltdown is one of the nifty ways those can blow out.
That's why you have to inspect the fan when you hear a
strange sound, or smell plastic burning.

I took the video card apart on my current machine, and
re-did the thermal paste - based on the info I was getting
from Speedfan. That also gave me a chance to inspect the
fan fully. You have to be careful when re-assembling,
not to crack the silicon die, if one is exposed. After
I cleaned the paste off, my GPU die was shiny as
can be. And ready for fresh paste. The result was not
much of an improvement in temperature, but at least
I knew my fan was clean.

I will check the cables. The monitor could have a bad connection. I
really didn't think of that. You speak of geometric squares. Well I have
seen them at times. Not for a while though. Some of them flash.

Bill