Last night I fired up FSX on my old XPS 710 desktop because I was tired of getting BSOD and GSOD on my G73 because my G940 and/or Trackir 5 apparently doesn't like Win 7. I thought I would see if they work better in XP. Well, a few seconds after my flight loaded, the whole thing started freakin out. Weird graphic anomalies and colors and after about 15-20 seconds it froze up completely (except for the audio). I had to do a hard shut down and then when I tried to restart, I got no video at all. The tower powered up but never did anything else. So I left it off for about five minutes and tried it again (with the G940 and Trackir unplugged). Well it appeared to load XP okay but then as soon as I started moving the mouse around I instantly got weird graphics and froze up solid. I have had this machine for about five years and it has never really gave me any problems. Since I got the G73, I actualy rarely use the thing but on occasion I will fire it up to do some music editing or so0mething because it has the software for that. Never had an issue until now.
I have been a technician of one sort or another for over 30 years. Any time I have seen something like this (but not on a PC) it has been a video issue. So what does anyone think? This XPS 710 has a duo-core 2.8 ghz CPU, 2 GB RAM, and a GTS 8600 nVidia graphics card.
I have been planning a major upgrade/replacement of my desktop anyway but I don't have the $$$ right now.