Computer failure: garbled screen

[RobertMcDonald]

My computer two days ago very suddenly went totally haywire and I?m at a loss to figure out why.

It started with some strange, vertical lines appearing when I was browsing the internet. Then weird lines ended up all over my screen and things started looking garbled and my computer BSOD?d and restarted itself. When it did, even my BIOS startup screen was garbled!

At this point, my computer won?t even finish booting into Windows, but I did end up getting it there once and it wouldn?t load programs before it finally had the screen go black and I restarted it.

Thinking it was the video card, I took my video card out and put it into my wife?s computer (which has the same power supply, though a totally different CPU and motherboard). After reinstalling the video card drivers (though why I had to do that when switching out an 8600GT to a 9600GT, I have no idea), the video card seemed to perform absolutely fine, both in a game (WoW) and web browsing.

Thus I am left to conclude that it?s not the video card that is the problem, despite the fact that it?s a video-related issue.

Any suggestions? Could it be my motherboard? How can I find out?

Thanks! I?m dying with my computer out of order.

Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Wolfdale
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 motherboard
3GB (3x1GB) Kingston ValueRAM PC2 6400
EVGA 512-P3-N861-TR GeForce 9600 GT 512MB PCI Express x16 video card
Corsair CMPSU-450VX 450W Power Supply
Windows Vista 32-bit SP1

 

[sivart]

Originally posted by: RobertMcDonald
When it did, even my BIOS startup screen was garbled!

From what I've seen a bad stick of RAM will cause the BIOS screen to have lines, sparkles, etc. I'd try testing that next.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Try getting into the system in safe mode. then reistall teh video drivers. You can also run Memtest to see if all your RAM checks out.

 

[RobertMcDonald]

As a picture is worth a thousand words, and thus a video must be worth millions, here is a video of my computer having its recent issue. During this video, the problem mysteriously clears up for no apparent reason and hasn't completely returned since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Djb-BxzNM

Following this I ran FurMark at EVGA's suggestion, with video card temperatures that EVGA said were totally normal.

Twice I saw "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered" since this. I also saw a slight glitch like what is in this video today, but nothing as "catastrophic" as what you see here.

After this video, I updated my video card drivers. Then I played WoW for about two hours.

Today, the computer has been up and down constantly. In one particularly memorable incident, I saw the "display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error three times then the screen went black and all I could see was my cursor (though it did change back and forth from a pointer to the text-input cursor.)

After a reboot, the computer will sometimes be okay for a while before it starts in again. Inevitably, though, it ends up crapping out.

I still need to try the PSU swap and a memtest, and perhaps I need to test the video card in my wife's computer for a longer amount of time. But I'm still open to other suggestions.