This is the 4th time I have tried to post this due to PC crashing, here goes...

OK PC keeps locking up, the screen freezes, nothing responds. When you reset, sometimes will boot to win, sometimes graphics garbbled and locks and some times sits pre bios with black screen.

Sometimes it can take ages to get it to boot at all, again black screen, bios gives 2 beeps followed by 10 (I think). Listening to HD activity I think PC is booting normally, but on internal graphics card. I am using gforce FX5550 256mb ram. Problem is I am using DVI not standard monitor so cannot use internal graphics card, and do not have spare monitor to test my theory.

Crashing always seems to be proceded by screen freeze, plus the screen sometimes flashes black (as if you changed the resolution) before the crash. Had this problem a few weeks ago, just when I was going to through it through the window all came good again, now its come back with a vengence.

Can anybody help? Do you think I am right and the graphics card is fubar'ed? If so can you recommend a (cheap) card with at least 256m and DVI (essental) Sorry about messy post had to type really quick.

If you ever get back to check, Read your Mobo's documentation regarding beeps.

Does your Graphics card have a fan... does the Fan work?

When a G-card overheats it usually just turns off, computer will still run but you'll have no picture.

You can only elimiate possibilities at this stage mate.

never got motherboard manual
Fan working fine, but did have a case fan go down, never got any alerts, but the crashing made me investigate and I found the fan. Sorted that and the problem went away for about a month, now its come back but appears to be in reverse, before crashing when hot, now appears to crash more when cold, system seems stable once warm.

if you have onboard graphics then change to them and remove the graphics cards
then its really elimination of other components

Would do, but only have a DVI display, on onboard card standard monitor only

Update, just using windows seems to be reasonably stable, when I play a video file (avi) tends to blank out after about 1 hour, turning off and leaving to cool seems to allow me to reboot. All the cooling seems to work, tis strange.

gfx card over heating if it's fan based - you could try a DVI to VGA convertor - cpu is overheating and going into safe mode when too hard pushed.

Liam

Bought a new heat sync and fan for gfx card. After monitoring PC temp, always crashed when reaching over 55 deg. Watched fan on card for a while, it kept slowing down. Fitted new fan and all seems to be good, not gone over 47.8 deg and no crashes (yet)