Hello, I bought an aftermarket cooler today. After installing it i started my PC but when windows was finished loading it crashed. Turns out i forgot to plug in the CPU fan, DOH. After pluggin it in i tried to boot into windows but it keeps crashing. It always crashes at the same moment, windows finishes loading but instead of the welcome screen i get a BSOD for a split second ( too fast to make out what it says ) and the PC shuts down. I assume i fried the CPU? It still shows up fine in the BIOS though, with normal temps this time . Could this have affected other components perhaps? I already tried reinstalling windows but i cant make it to the end of the installation proces. Any help is much appreciated. EDIT: Pic of the BSOD Looks like a gfx card problem? Can this be caused by an overheating CPU?
Welcome to HWF This is definitely a problem with the graphics card. Don't know if it's caused by the card or the device driver. Best is to install the latest graphics drivers from ATI, and see if the problem disappears.
if you fried your cpu it wouldn't post. As Rhochstenbach said will most likely be graphics card drivers, try uninstalling the card from device manager reboot your system and let windows install a generic drive if possible, see how it runs for about half an hour and then update your graphics card to the latest ATI drivers.
I agree, you would have damaged the gpu driver when your pc crashed (its common to develop a fault with an inturrupted startup) If you havent already fixed it go into safe mode and delete the ati drivers and re-install from cd, then update it as soon as you run windows.