problem with pc

action jackson

have problem often with my computer, and i think it stems from my graphics card. Basically i upgraded to a nvidia 6600 gt about six months ago into my dell dimension 4550. I was advised at time that might have power issue, but after several discussions on forums, it apparently worked fine on medium settings, as the card configures power etc itself at start up.
Anyway, my current dilemma is that quite often (perhaps 1 in 5 times i do this) my computer crashes after changing media files, ie, from mp3 to mpeg or other video formats. What happens is that the screen blows up to enormous resolution and I can only see the top right corner of the screen, and so there is little i can do except turn off pc on base unit, which could not be good for pc doing this many times. to be more exact with what happens is that, i do not even have to open the mpeg, i only would have to tab down the media files from mp3 to mpeg, and then the screen blows upto enormous proportions.

any advice would be welcome !

thanks

8T8

This is a bug to do with Java and NVIDIA's display drivers, if you force AA on in the NVIDIA control panel and have a Java based app running the background (like a Bittorrent client) it causes this problem whereby the screen is "blown up" or an extreme zoom in.

Simple answer is to set AA to Application Controlled or off in the NVIDIA control panel, media players tend to set the bug off which is why you thought it was to do with the video.

NVIDIA have known about this for ages but it seems it isn't going to be fixed, I saw this issue a good while back (GeForceFx/5 era) before I discovered what caused it.

action jackson

thanks for that, i take it by AA you mean anti-aliasing ?

action jackson

by the way, what does anti aliasing actually do ? as often in games you get option to turn on or off, at different settings.

will i notice much of a difference if i turn off ? also, i never had any bother with any advanced games, like hl2, doom, etc, and usually i have aa on.

8T8

action jackson wrote:

thanks for that, i take it by AA you mean anti-aliasing ?

Yes.

action jackson wrote:

by the way, what does anti aliasing actually do ? as often in games you get option to turn on or off, at different settings.

will i notice much of a difference if i turn off ? also, i never had any bother with any advanced games, like hl2, doom, etc, and usually i have aa on.

AA removes the jaggies or stepping effect you see on the edges of objects in 3D games & such. Generally you do notice the difference between having AA on and off though there are two common levels 2xAA and 4xAA with 4xAA costing more in terms of performance but smooths out the jaggies better than the 2x mode. Here is a small example from the game F.E.A.R the top & middle cards are running a form of 2xAA and the bottom is running with 4xAA and you can clearly see it removes the jaggies much better from objects.

Let me just elaborate on that setting the AA to app controlled in the NVIDIA control panel means leave the game [if it has the option] to set the level of AA, in apps that don't use AA it simply treats it as AA is turned off.

When you select an AA mode in NVIDIA's control panel you are globally forcing that mode. So if you have a game that doesn't have the option for AA inside it and you want to force AA in the NV control panel just remember to set AA back to app controlled before starting up your BT client.

Of course there is another method that allows you to forgo having to set the AA mode in the NV control panel by creating game profiles but I'll only go into detail on that if you want to know about it.

action jackson

that is a great help, thanks alot.

i will probably just turn it off !