video card messed up cuz of virus?

[cynical897]

hi, a week ago or so my computer got infected with something that did alot of damage.. i had to restore with the factory shiped settings...i think i had a virus or something that messed up my video card? is that possible? i was just playing a game and i was getting all these pop ups and stuff, i wasnt even in a browser... so i turned of the pc to see if a reboot would help... i restarted it, when windows xp started to load my monitor was flickering at me, and then it looked like these little text was like stuck in the monitor... i thought the virus had messed up my monitor, but i tried another monitor and it still did it. so i swapped video cards with another pc to see what was up, and now the text was gone, so i did a system restore... and here i am, do any of you know what is going on?

 

[Ste]

Its possible the Virus messed with the video Drivers, but I doubt it could do damage to the card itself. What broswer do you use? Got a firewall? Got an AntiVirus program such as norton, AVG or Avast?

 

[cynical897]

well the card is nvidia geforce 4 ti 4600 128MB

i use firefox mostly, ie sometimes...

i dont have antivirus, just spybot/ad-aware checks every once in a while

 

[Ste]

Since you don't have an anti Virus then, try AVast or AVG both free. A/V protection is very important.

 

[cynical897]

i had nortan antivirus, but it slowed things so much, and i would always loose access to internet stuff i needed...

what do you reccomend i do with the video card that got messed with?

 

[dipique]

Take off all the drivers. Restart the computer, and cancel all the "found new hardware" prompts. Reinstall the newest drivers, as well as AVG antivirus (don't worry, it doesn't have a big footprint). Then restart the computer. And never use NAV.

Dan