My video card is dead. /cry

I’m going to have to go into a little bit of background.  Bear with me, if you know this already…

In mid-November I found the Christmas gift I wanted my Grandmother to get me.  She’s a big gift-giver.  Different people speak different love languages, and I’d have to say my grandma’s top 2 are gift-giving and quality time.  The first increases when she can’t get enough of the second.  However, she wanted gift ideas, and it took me awhile, but I thought of something.  I’d been wanting a new video card.

My new video card was the EVGA 8800GT. According to a close friend, the new 8800 boards from NVidia are just stellar, and relatively inexpensive, to boot.  So I talked to my grandma, and she liked the idea.  So she bought it.  Here’s something else about my grandma.  If you can use what she got you, she doesn’t like to wait until Christmas.  So I got it and put it in my computer.  I loved it….until Saturday…

On Saturday, I was playing Lord of the Rings Online, waiting for breakfast to be done, enjoying the wonderful water and shadow effects that I get with DirectX 10, when suddenly…Black Screen.  Music continued to play, tantalizing me with the sounds of the Prancing Pony Inn, but it was as if my poor minstrel went suddenly and tragically blind.  After entertaining some interesting notions about Blind Blues Minstrels, Blind Melon Minstrels, and other assorted blind musicians, I realized that something was terribly wrong.  I hadn’t even had the chance to drink any unsafe liquor at the Prancing Pony.  Something was wrong with my hardware.

When I started experiencing the problem, my first troubleshooting step was to yell at my computer.  That’s always the first step in troubleshooting.  It’s an instant, visceral shout. “HEY!  WHAT THE HECK?!?!!”  I’m not sure what function it solves, but I can say that I have never solved a computer problem without saying that at least once.  I then powered off my machine and restarted into Windows. The video card worked fine, prompting me to get back into LOTRO to finish my Minstrel quest.  This time, it went black even faster.  I soon realized that I couldn’t do ANYTHING without LOTRO going black on me.  I did some searches and turned up a little bit of information.  Nothing helpful, but I realized that I wasn’t the only person that had a problem like this. So I called Gabe.

Troubleshooting is definitely a more fun process when you’ve got a friend to laugh at every misstep.  It’s nice when they’re in the room, because at that point, retaliation for their mocking laughter is always an option.  With Gabe, however, it’s always fun to do it over the phone, because he gets his dad involved.  His dad LOVES to laugh at my tragic situations.  Gabe determined that it was my power supply that was causing the problem.  I downloaded the newest NVidia driver (AND NTune, Gabe….) and did a stability test.  During the stability test, my black screen soon became accompanied by a pretty blue screen with white writing…Yes, the dreaded BSOD.

At this point, I decided that I’d get a power supply, and I took Gabe with me to Best Buy to pick it up.  Brought it back, installed it, and started playing LOTRO.  Black Screen again. Near-swearing ensues.  (I can’t tell you how painful it must have been for Kim to let me buy a power supply, but we’re keeping it…my old one was secondhand.)

Gabe revised his original position at this point, explaining that the video card must be busted, as though I hadn’t figured that out already. The EVGA cards have a lifetime warranty, but you have to register on their site to get the Advanced RMA, which is a much better deal, and only costs $7.99+ for a nice, Cross-Ship RMA.  I had not registered my card….GASP.  I had 30 days from the date of purchase. I checked the date of purchase…11/16/07!  GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY!  My video card blew up JUST IN TIME!

In short, I registered my card, got my RMA lodged, and as of this morning, they have approved my cross ship RMA.  I don’t know when I can expect my card, but it just so happens that I can’t play LOTRO until it comes.  This is sad.

Oh well…I’m glad this happened before the 30 days went bye bye. Could have been worse.  The moral of this story?  Don’t listen to Gabe when troubleshooting.  :)