Video / Graphic Card Error - Can't Start and Colorful Lines On Screen

[Ragnos]

Note: I bold the most important things so people can skim my post through.

Hey there everyone,

The other night I had to restart my computer while playing a game on Steam because the visuals on my screen warped so that it looked like I was playing an Atari 2600 game. I immediately knew there was a problem as soon as my computer booted up; the motherboard logo showing on screen was botched up. Upon logging into Windows XP I discovered colorful lines streaking across a screen that shrunk in resolution.

I decided to inspect a little more and found out that I could not increase the screen resolution to the standard 1440 x 900 so I settled on 32 bit 1024 x 768 for the moment.

I immediately proceeded to update the drivers for my video card which is an e-GeForce 8800 GTX. After installing the drivers and restarting the computer the colored lines still decorated my monitor.

Next I opened up the Device Manager and discovered that my video card had the error, "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" Under the Driver tab in its properties I saw that it does have its drivers installed.

Figuring that I may have knocked the computer a few times too many I decided to power off and disconnect my computer. After that I opened it up and removed, cleaned and properly inserted and connected the video card back into its proper slot. Upon booting up the computer once more I was not surprised, but disappointed, to see the persistent colorful lines once more.

I then decided to go back into the Device Manager and follow the advice that clicking the Troubleshooting button gave me in the general tab. Only everything that it recommended I already did. The end result I got from the troubleshooter was, "This troubleshooter is unable to solve your problem."

So in a last moment ditch effort to discover something new I checked out the resources tag in the video card properties and found a note saying that "This device isn't using any resources because it has a problem."

I'm out of ideas on what I can do to fix this problem. If anyone can help me I'd be most grateful for your help.

Thanks in advance,

Ragnos

 

[patonb]

Did you try to reinstall the drivers?

But I'm fearing a dead card.

D/l the memtestg80 program from here: Folding@home - DownloadUtils

Its a cmd line program that'll test your gpu memory for errors and basically will show a dead card or not.

 

[Ragnos]

Hey thanks, patonb, for the advice. I messed around with memtestg80 the other night. However, the instructions on how to run the program in the command line were lacking. So I haven't figured out how to even run the test. Any tips?

 

[Ragnos]

After a lengthy amount of time in research, I've come to the conclusion that the problem with my graphic card is not software related. The display errors start up before the operating system ever loads so the problem lay with the hardware.

It looks like I'll be buying a new card. :|

P.S. - I never did figure out how to run and operate memtestg80. I'd appreciate a quick how to if anyone is up to it.

Thanks!

 

[patonb]

Doh, sorry I knew i need to do something.

Okay, get a cmd window and navigate to the exe. Then simply run memtestg80 256 50

256 is the amount of memory to test, it seems yhou can't test it all or you won't beable to use the monitor. 50 is the amount of times yo want to test. it takes like 10secs a test.

It'll ask you yor card speeds but you can lie about it if you wish.

 

[Alex2478]

I have to agree that it is a hardware problem. I had a NVIDIA card that was doing pretty much the same thing. Make sure you completely uninstall both the drivers and any video card software before you reinstall the drivers.

If its still having problems you can install old drivers for that video card and see if they are more compatible. It sounds weird but it has fixed issues for me in the past.

As a side note take a look at the pins in your HDMI or VGA cable and make sure all the pins are there and not damaged.