Help Big Crash (drivers?)

I am in my office on a saturday (gag) because last night my computer decided to crash....hard!

I am totally freaked right now and on my way to bring it to a repair place in hopes they can sort it out. But....perhaps someone here is enough of a techie to give some insight as to what has happened. I run on a Dell XPS410.....windowsXP..... tons of memory...I forget how much but I know I've only used like 25% thus far with the programs I run and so on. My g-card is a NVidia GeForce7600 which has always always run SL beautifully and I kpet the drivers updated.

But....last night....I had turned it on and started up my desktop game Zuma....just something I do to de-stress...play a few rounds of Zuma and zone out. I had loaded it maybe a year ago from a store bought disk. Anyway....mid game my puter suddenly shuts down. Ok,...I think maybe power surge, it's happened....so I wait a few and re-boot. Well.....to my horror LOL My start up screen looks like someone took a pick axe to the pixels and it's fragmented almost beyond recognition. A blue screen comes up that I can barely make out the type in between the fragments......and it says something to the effect of a driver has been cuaght in a loop cycle and yada yada call your manufacturer/provider. E-friggin-gads. I tried to re-boot a couple more times....and each time I got the same bizarro fragmenting and the Dell start up was still visible....then it would go to the windows ,oad screen....(all this time the screen looking like something out of Tha Matrix) and once it got to the Windows load.....the load bar showed loading...then it goes directly to sleep mode. So....clearly there is a serious corruption going on.

Anyway....I'll probably come back by here after I drop the sick puppy off and check my email and messeges. But...also.......if someone could please contact the owners of The Sisters Sims (I live on Saraluv).....dam I forget her name .....Melony something....anyway....these are the partners of the girl that passed away in July, Sara Sullivan.........um, I need to let them know that I'm locked out of SL until I get my computer fixed...or get a new one and right now I have no clue how long that will be.

Also....I have a good friend...Haven Robianni, who's email I don't have, but I'd like for her to know what's going on too.

Ugh.....you guys I am so pissed off......more so because my fiance's in Iraq and my computer is my life line to him.....this sucks hard. Anyway..I appreciate any advice or assistance you guys can offer. (((((((hugs)))))))

back later

Start the computer up in safe mode, if you can. When booting, press F8 repeately, and then select safe mode with network. There you can try to reinstall drivers or simply just try to see, if it's a hardware problem.
I tried to look up Haven Robianni in SL, to let her know, but she does not exist, please check name, and I'd be happy to help letting her know...

Best of luck with your computer.

Do Dells have a recovery disk? Also as suggested go into safe mode and reinstall drivers.

I found a Haven Robbiani? Is that her?

Yes...Haven....I probably spelled her last name wrong...it's definitely Robbiani.

I already dropped the computer off at the repair place and then proceded on to TJMax to get work clothes LOL I don't have any of my recovery disks because all that stuff is still at our other house in SC......but the guy at the repair place said they would be able to do that if need be. Big stress for me....I live on my computer. Fortunately my office isn't that far and I have a key.

Thanks guys...I appreciate the support. I would have tried the f8 start up if I knew it...LOL Oh well...the computer place should be able to sort it out. I've just got to figure out what to do with myself now......I really don't feel like hanging out in this office over a weekend...*gag*.

anywho...yeah...Haven Robbiani and the owners of the Three Sisters sims.....or just pop over to Saraluv island and check out the kiosk in back....the owner details are there. I don't want them thinking I'm skipping out on my tier....I think it's due around the 16th but not sure.
Of course the weather is lousy today so I can't even go home and jump in the pool.....go figure....guess I'll go check out what's on cable *sniffle* wish me luck.

Sent a message to Haven Robbiani and also sent a notecard to Aragon Agnomen (One of the Owners) with your last post and a link to this thread.

Thank you~!!!

I'm at my sisters house now, on her laptop......LOL I have been pet sitting for her anyway so.....may as well fire up the laptop even tho it takes for ev er to start up. LOL

My fiance responded to my distress email by telling me to just get a new computer LOL Riiight....his idea of a new computer is usually some outrageous state of the art we could run NASA withit type computer, I told him I'd wait and see what the puter place ays. He also said starting it in safe mode probably would have fixed the problem. I really hope he's right.

I'm trying to keep from twitching here.....having a nice refreshing blueberry lager.

Sounds a bit like an incident I had with a failing hard drive. I stupidly ignored a couple of disc errors which could be dealt with, and then it got an error in one of the operating system load files. Got to a fixed point in the loading (there's some key you can press to list each file as it loads) and then hung. Always the same point. Had to get someone more knowledgable than me to boot from CD and make a bitwise copy of the disc onto a new one. Then could repair the OS. However, I did not have the display fragmentation you describe, That sounds more like a video card hardware malfunction, which I suppose could cause a freeze when the drivers are loaded and start to talk to it. I would try a new/spare video card before tearing all my hair out. (Actually, I can't anyway becuase I haven't got all my hair to start with).

Come to think of it, before that I would try wiggling the card in its socket. And, oh yes, making sure the fans are all running and not clogged with dust.

If you're getting the garbled Dell startup screen, which is BEFORE windows even starts to load, then it's NOT a windows problem and and the driver error was a side effect of the real problem. My first guess would be that your 7600 went poof, although the mangled images could possibly be from excessive heat due to an entire family of giant dust bunnies living in the video cards heat sinc.

/me luv's Zuma as well