Corrupted video?

To explain this requires a bit of a story. So, I went on vacation for a week earlier in July. Before I did, I shutdown my computer and pulled the power cord out of the powersupply. I do have a good belkin surge surpressor, but just incase...I decided it would be better unplugged. When I came back and plugged it back in and tried to turn it on, nothing happened. Uh oh. Powersupply must be dead. Strange considering I unplugged it to protect it and now it doesn't work. Oh well...it was a cheap Powmax model I've been meaning to upgrade for a long time.

So I RMA'd it to newegg and bought a nice new xconnect model, one of the ones with modular cables. Very nice, other than the fact that their connectors prevent me from putting on the side panel of my Antec Lanboy case, but that's another story. I also upgraded the stock HSF with a coolermaster one. I figured as long as it's down for a week, I may as well make it worth it.

Anyway, I digress. My problem comes in here. Upon booting my system I find every other component of my system working just dandy...except for the video. I'm experiencing very weird artifacting. But the thing is, I can capture them with screen shots.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/geekguy/weird.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/geekguy/ocfourms.jpg


With a damaged video card, is it normal to be able to capture the artifacting with printscreen? I've never really heard whether or not this is the case. At times the screen will look perfectly normal, and then it will artifact and it will take highlighting text, moving the window, etc to get it to look right again.

Did my video card get damaged?

Here's my specs for reference:
Asus A7N8X mobo
Athlon XP 2500+ @ stock
1 GB Corsair DDR333
ATI Radeon 9800PRO 256MB

The good news is, with my new HSF applied with arctic silver 5 my CPU temps have gone down dramatically. So I guess there's something to be happy about.

Reload Video Drivers. If you're overclocking and doing benchmarking those vid drivers can get hosed. I've had this happen many times. When it starts weirding out, I just reload vid drivers and it usually cures it. A few times I have had to uninstall Riva tuner and the drivers, and then run driver cleaner and then reinstall everything.

If that doesn't cure it, something could've got damaged. Things tend to fail during heating and cooling cycles. if you shut it down and it went to full cold and then booted it back up, it's possible that extra stress could've caused a permanent failure. I never shutdown my system unless I know there is a T-Storm right there and lightning is striking in the near vicinity. I even hate rebooting. I suspect this why MS worked hard to eliminate so many reboots after software updates with XP. 98 you had to reboot every single time.

If you're OC'd little things will rear their ugly head more than they would stock.

Nothing was OC'd on my system ever.

I just upgraded to the lastest catlyst drivers. What was an intermittent problem turned into constant flickering lines. While I was trying to take a screen shot of this new thing...my computer locked up and the screen went blank. Now, everytime you turn the machine on, it gets past post and the screen goes blank. So, I really don't have any doubt my video card is seriously effed up. Off to ATI RMA I guess.

geekguy said:

Nothing was OC'd on my system ever.

I just upgraded to the lastest catlyst drivers. What was an intermittent problem turned into constant flickering lines. While I was trying to take a screen shot of this new thing...my computer locked up and the screen went blank. Now, everytime you turn the machine on, it gets past post and the screen goes blank. So, I really don't have any doubt my video card is seriously effed up. Off to ATI RMA I guess.

Click to expand...

I would still try to reinstall drivers or roll back. You may be right, and there is a good chance you are, but I always check the easy things first, because sending a good card back is just a hassle.

Since you said you just updated drivers that makes me even more suspicious of them. The old saying "be mindful of the last thing you changed, lest you may have to change it back" come into play here. It's also possible you could have installed a corrupted download of those drivers...happens all the time.

RMA it if you want, but I'd still check it.

Well the thing is it ran on the new drivers just fine, though it was still artifacting, until it went blank. And I don't even have a cheap card to throw in there in the mean time, or to change the drivers back. I really do think the card was damaged somehow, and I'm going to send it in. I have to have this machine up and running for school, so I'd rather not wait to get it sent in. But thanks for the help/advice.