What a Bozo?

Well, I thought this might amuse a few here...........

Equipment:

P4/1.7Ghz
nVidia Geforce 3 64Mb DDR
CTX PV720A LCD flatscreen
Windows 2000 SP4, fully patched
Latest BIOS

Problem:

Videos on DVD media won't play or play sound only, or play with a very dark image as if you were looking at colour print negatives? As far as I can tell the CD handling was working fine.

Nothing showing as a problem in device manager.

I try:

1. Check device manager for problems........................................... nope
2. Reinstall drivers for sound and video.......................................... nope
3. Install a variety of DVD and media players.................................. nope
4. Load codecs......................................................................... nope
5. Try variety of resolution and refresh rates.................................. nope
6. Download and install/re-install latest screen and vid card drivers.... nope

I finally go back to the video management package that I had tried before and either reset (confirmed) or changed various settings.

All of a sudden the damn thing works!.......... but I was so p1$$ed off with it; I did a whole load of stuff at once, and cannot determine what solved it:mad:

Having talked to the owners, I knew that the HDD had died and had been replaced. They had reinstalled and updated the OS (twice, on discovering the problem). They had (they say) loaded the latest drivers.

Very annoying that my own impatience got the better of, me, but, as I have never seen anything like this before, I suppose it doesn't really matter?

I would guess that one of the previous installs was corrupted?

Worst of all it was a "favour for a friend" :rolleyes:

Yeah, and when that vga cable jiggles loose again you'll be
back in hot water for sure!
:cool:

rcgreen: I've seen that a couple of times. However, I'd hope that Nihil (or the end user) was smart enough to figure that much. It has probably been disconnected/reconnected several times over just to install the new HD or to physically bring it to Nihil. I doubt they brought along their monitor too? But, who knows... I've certainly seen stranger things. :p

C'mon guys...........??????????

First thing you do is clean, reseat all cards, check contacts and the like. I didn't mention it because it is just so standard over here. Our roads can be old and bumpy, so anything which has had an automobile ride gets that preliminary inspection.;)

This has something to do with the nVidia management system and/or the LCD monitor. It started to work when I went into the video management and messed around with stuff like "antialiasing" and the like:)

I am starting to suspect the culprit(s) .................. and am about to impose a legal charge on their pocket money (surefire way to get one of them to cop a plea? :lildevil:)

Well, why should dad have to buy me beer?

Download VLC player :-)

Nope, that was one of the several that I tried oofki, I eliminated players and codecs.

Incidentally, there was no problem with normal applications, picture viewing, animated gifs and so on.

Obviously the "high tech fairy" visited during one of your bathroom breaks and fixed it for.

Years ago (80386 days) we had a computer in our shop and someone mis IDed the type of hard drive to CMOS (remember when you had to do that). No one knew the keystroke to get it into setup. We didn't have manuals (or the web back then) to research.
We unplugged the battery for an hour thinking CMOS will be asking for setup, that didn't do it. We removed the CMOS chip, a 14 pin DIP, and set it on a metal plate.

Your's truly reinstalled it an put it in backwards. Turned the computer on and the room was filled with the smell of burning silicon and germanium. Shut things down, re installed the chip correctly and tried again. This time the computer came up in setup and we were good to go.

We had let out enough of the bad smoke so things would work again.

Don't let anyone tell you that computers aren't magic

Its possible to adjust gamma/contrast/colour temperature on "layers" of the desktop so you can have a different brightness for overlays (vidoes) to your desktop. I did it once when I had a dying CRT and I boosted the gamma on videos cos they didn't show properly.

I can't actually remember or find the option right now, but it can be done. Perhaps that was the problem and something you did reset that?

I basically set stuff to "default" or "off" but I don't remember what the previous settings were. I am sure their kids must have been pissing around with games, and screwed the settings. :(

Fdisk, format /u, install again. :-)

No, that would do no good other than to force a reload of the videocard drivers/management software et cetera.

This was definitely a videocard, player, codec or screen problem, not a Windows one.

The strange thing was that everything worked apart from videos. The reason I am annoyed at myself is I didn't make a note of what I changed in the video settings. :(

This thread is pure gold. And i understand why it is indeed in Tech Humour.
But we all have those days where you know what you've changed the settings to should be correct, but the blasted thing just won't play fairly.

and always in the heat of the moment when you just start changing every option you can see and not take notes on what you have or haven't changed then that's when it starts working again. :mad: