[sosanna]

Last night my video went all screwy as I was using my computer. I got interference and snowy stuff all over the screen. I restarted the computer, and the screen went black (completely black, no flickers) after the Windows XP splash screen. While on the Windows splash screen there are rows of blue colored rectangles across the screen. I have an older nVidia GeForce4 Ti4600 (agp) on a Dell 8200 and financially cannot upgrade to a new comp at this time.

I restarted in safe mode, uninstalled my video drivers, restarted and had video (windows detected my uninstalled video card). So I downloaded and reinstalled my drivers, but when I restarted it went to black again. I also tried installing the newest version of directx and I rebooted to the last known good configuration, neither worked.

I opened the case, took the card out, it looked fine, not dusty and it was not hot. I reseated the card, turned the comp on and the fan was working.

I haven't yet gone to the reformatting/reinstalling windows step... I'm wondering should I reformat or is this more likely a dead video card?

[Elvandil]

Sounds like the video card went to heaven. If it has a cooling fan, it may have stopped and burned out the GPU.But all indications you have given are to "heat". When you say the fan was turning, was it skipping, dragging at all, or running smoothly?

Is it an AGP? If PCI, try a different slot.

But the sparklies before the failure are not a good sign.

[sosanna]

Originally Posted by Elvandil

When you say the fan was turning, was it skipping, dragging at all, or running smoothly?

Thanks for the quick response.

The fan on the card was running smoothly, as was the cpu fan. And it's an AGP card so I can't try another slot unfortunately.

[Elvandil]

The only way to narrow that down would be to try another card. The symptoms don't point to software, but where did you get the drivers you installed? Were they new ones from the manufacturer?

[sosanna]

Yes, I got the drivers from the nVidia website. When it happened, my first thought was that the card was fried, as you suggested.

I'm going to try to get an AGP card tomorrow and I'll post if that solves the issue.

[sosanna]

I finally got a chance to get a new card installed, and the problem is fixed.

Tossing the old card on the "Used Junk Pile" along with all my other old components!