I blew into my computer while it was on. This is what happened... computer, everything, describe, regular

andy

...it made this funny noise, hard to describe.  Almost like you're choking the life out of someone (not that I have).  It sputtered for a few seconds then returned to its regular humming state.  I was worried there for a while but the computer, OS and everything was still operational with no change in performance.

BTW, I blew into the system because it started humming noisily which was probably due to too much dust and I didn't feel like turning off the system to do it.

Anyhow, a day passes by, all things are swell and dandy until I open a video file and I get this weird playback issue which I have never had before.This is what happens:

To get this effect to work, open one video file and have it play. Then, open another video file so that both are playing simultaneously. The first video should look quot;normalquot; with regular colors - nothing irregular. But the second video looks a bit darker, tinted almost. Also, the second video should appear like it's removed all instances of macroblocks, (it's really a weird effect but I hope you try and see for yourself).  Now the problem with me is that my computer won't play the video in the quot;regularquot; way that it should. Instead, it's playing all video with the tinted way even with just one video opened. This happens to ALL video media type, so it's not a problem with the divx or ffdshow decoder. I'm thinking that it could be a missing file or registry problem.

Also, I did a full reinstall of my graphics card with two versions of drivers (one that came with the card and the most updated one) and the problem still persists. My graphics card is a GeForce4 440MX and the most current drivers, as of yesterday, are ver. 43.75.

Heck, I even tried using another graphics card, an ATI Rage Pro 4MB and the problem still persisted.

I also did a reinstall of Win98SE.  This was not a full, clean reinstall but one where I inserted the Win98 disc and had it reinstall every file from the CD again.  eg: I did not format the drive and remove the effected OS due to many important files still on there.

Hardware acceleration is indeed enabled to full. I even updated to WMP 7 amp; 8, which I hate so much, along with the WMP ver. 9 codecs but that still didn't fix it. If I open the video in WMP 6.4, right click =gt; click on Properties =gt; Advanced =gt; double click Video Renderer =gt; DirectDraw, all DirectDraw options are checked, including YUV and RGB Overlays. Unless there's another overlay option which I'm not aware about, I'm pretty sure that overlay is enabled as well.

I also updated my virus checker, Norton Antivirus, to the latest virus definitions as well but no virus has been reported.All in all, I have not a found any viable solution, so I turn to the people here at  in an attempt that someone might have the know-how and knowledge to help me out.

PS.  I know how long this message is, so I would like thank anyone in advance who actually read this post in its entirety.

Thanks.

From what you discribe, you have no overlay on your video .How can you be so sure that overlay is used ?Did you check it with Graphedit or else? The thing with two videos playing simultaneusly is not at all new.The first one uses overlay ,the second one is not (unfortunately, graphic cards have only one overlay layer).The most common case is when you try to open a video through windows explorer.That way, the thumbview quot;stealsquot; your overlay and as a result you can see all kinds of artifacts  (macroblocks, wrong colors and luma, quot;stairstepping edgesquot; etc).So, always make sure to disable thumbview or to close win. explorer before watching a movie. To fix an overlay prob ,install latest DirectX(9 is stable and quite safe, now) again.If the damage is hardware related ,i dunno how much you can do about it.You can also check with graphedit if overlay mixer filter is used for rendering your movie.By facing same prob with ATI ,though , it seems to me it has to do with software.If you have a corrupted registry ,try fixing it and uninstalling-installing drivers through safe mode. Microsoft in order to get rid of overlay issues, has changed rendering techniques creating VideoMixerRendener instead of VideoRendener and OverlayMixer (yeah,and Overlaymixer2..) in winxp and/or directx9.So ,even if your overlay is damaged, you can still use VMR (a lot of players nowadays are compatible , such as MediaPlayerClassic or  1337player (and latest beta of zoomplayer).It's quite CPU intencive but you won't have artifacts... Please, try installing your graphic card on another machine.If the prob persists, you can be sure it's hardware related.Also ,please check your bios if you have on board graphic system.A short connection could have returned your bios to default settings (uncompatible with your Geforce) Hope i helped a bit.regards,george

That is very normal behaviour, overlay can only be used for one rendered graph ...

no no no Christian, I saying that the rendered graph overlay thing is happening to my FIRST video rather than having two videos playing at the same time.

Right now, I'm testing drebel's suggestions so I'll get back as soon as I exhausted all options and possibilites.