Video Problems After Power Failure

[Abheek]

Hello there, I am facing this very unusual problem with my external hard disk drive. I have an Asus G series laptop which has Windows Xp professional edition installed on it. Apart from that I have installed Windows 7 on my External Hard disk. Windows 7 on the external drive was running fine but suddenly after the power failure there are some difficulties with the Video quality in it. I can boot from the external drive but the picture and video quality has degraded a lot. I connect the external hard drive to my laptop to boot Windows 7. Is this because of Windows corruption? Please suggest some solutions.

[Hardwareman]

Video quality degradation can only happen when there is some issue with the Video card of the system. Video and Picture quality depends totally on the performance of the video card of the system. As you connect the external hard drive to the laptop to boot, there is a chance that the power failure must have damaged the video card of the laptop. Check the performance of the video card by booting the laptop with Windows XP and Check the Video and Picture quality. If Windows XP also gives the same performance then there is something wrong with the video card. Therefore get it checked from a technician.

[Fabian]

Sudden Power failure can cause many problems but i dont think that the video card of the laptop is damaged. Modern laptops have surge protection which avoids any hardware failure due to power fluctuation. Check the Video drivers which are installed in the operating system there on the external hard drive. Power failure must have corrupted the video drivers which is responsible for bad video and picture quality. Check if the drivers are installed and working properly. Uninstall the drivers and then reinstall them. See if the problem persists.

[Killen]

I think the operating system on the external hard drive is corrupted and is creating problems. Hard drive consist of platters and movable head. Hard disks stores data using magnetic fields. If the power to the hard drive is cut suddenly then the it creates data corruption on the hard drive. Restore the Windows installation on the external drive. Before restoring the operating system, dont forget to take backup of the data as during reinstallation the system may also prompt you to format the drive.

[Rawko]

The power failure must have taken the hard drive down. External or Portable hard drives are very unreliable for data storage. They are more prone to data losses due physical damage or improper storage. Hence the external hard drives are recommended for only data storage use and not to load any operating system on them. Check the consistency of the drive by connecting the drive in slave mode and then run different diagnostic tools on the drive. See how many errors are encountered by running the tests. Repair the errors if they are repairable. If not then format the drive and install the operating system again.

[RoninBlade]

Have you upgraded the Windows 7 after installation? When Windows 7 was launched it had many issues with the driver incompatibility which were solved in the later versions. The first fix or patch which was available for Windows 7 was for Poor video quality. Download the patch and then install if on the hard drive. It will patch the video configuration files of the existing operating system with new files. After updating windows, the video and picture quality will improve.