I present to you, another chapter in the saga of my dying video card. I know this running account may not be everyone’s cup of tea, so don’t keep reading unless you want to know what happened next.
I got a response to my support ticket within hours of submission. Unfortunately, the response was rather lackluster. It was your basic auto response, aimed at weeding out those that could have solved the problem by reading.
Greetings!
Based on our experience, display issues are usually due to system configuration or display software settings. Click the following link to review the full details on how to trouble shoot display related issues. http://www.ati.com/online/customercare/solutions/displayissues.html If these suggestions don’t help to resolve your issues, please respond to the ticket and one of our q! ualified support representatives will assist you. To respond to this ticket you must visit http://support.ati.com and login to My Support.
Thank you for choosing ATI!
Customer Care
ATI Technologies Inc.
The problem I have with this response is not that it was scripted. No, rather my problem is that within that page, we have the section relevant to me (based upon the description of the problem and the screenshot I attached).
For users that are experiencing graphical corruption (ie. lines, checkerboard patterns, flashing dots, giant triangles, etc.) in 3D games, full motion video, initial POST screens on start-up or 2D desktop applications:
Issues such as these can sometimes indicate a problem with the hardware of the video card, such as, flaws and/or defects, overheating, hardware damage. These problems can sometimes also be caused by corrupted or incorrect drivers. In all cases, to further troubleshoot, uninstall the current ATI drivers from add/remove programs and try alternate drivers from the previous drivers and software portions of the Customer Care website. If the issues are always present and are unable to be resolved, it is likely that your video card will need to be serviced.
The document they pointed me at recommends getting it sent in for service. Couldn’t they check what they’re recommending and realize that I match up with an option that requires more action on their part? I can’t dwell on that too much though because they did promptly send me instructions to send the card in for service the very next morning (following my response that I needed the card serviced late last night).
In the next installment, I’ll describe what I need to do to get the card sent back. Same bat time, same bat RSS feed.
