[Label]

Soon after installing Vista on my desktop I started getting artifacts on the screen that make it pretty much impossible to read. The computer will now only boot into safe mode. When I try to boot it regularly, it hangs on a black screen before loading vista. There are artifacts when the system posts as well as in the BIOS.

I read somewhere that this might be a RAM issue. At the time, I had 1 stick of 1 GB ram, as well as 2 x 512 MB. I removed the 2 x 512, thinking that Vista had an issue with the memory configuration, and the system started up just fine - the screen looked absolutely normal. I left the computer running all night and there were no issues.

I then moved the computer downstairs and tried to restart it, and now the same problem is back - the artifacts on the screen. Could this be a possible seating problem with the graphics card, and I just happened to fix it when I removed the RAM? I've tried removing, cleaning, and reseating the graphics card, but it still doesn't fix the problem. Does anyone have any what the problem is?

Thanks!

Computer Specs:
ASUS P4P800-E DELUXE 478 Intel Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 3.0E Prescott 3.0GHz CPU
Corsair Valueselect 2 x 512MB RAM
Seagate 160GB 7200 RPM IDE HDD
Antec TRUE430 ATX 430W PSU
GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP 4x/8x

[Label]

Update:

I installed the ForceWare Release 65 v67.03 driver and it still shows the same artifacts, but I am able to boot into windows without safemode. I looked at the graphics card under device manager and it says that it encountered a code 10 when it tried to run. Any ideas on how to fix it, or is my graphics card dead?

[katabby]

go into your device manager and try rolling back your display driver to a previous version

[Label]

I've had to change drivers so many times (working with nvidia's service dept) that rolling back the driver doesn't work. I'm beginning to think its more of a hardware issue and less of a driver issue.

I'll post some pictures of what the screen looks like, which might help someone recognize the problem.

http://i14.tinypic.com/6cy1ffa.jpg
http://i10.tinypic.com/4uyoxhk.jpg

[oblig]

I had a very similar problem to this and believe it or not reducing the refresh rate worked - worth a try anyway!