Video card problems!!

[Tullphan]

It's a Gigabyte Radeon 9200SE. Recently it's been acting stupid. I'm having vertical bands aprroximately 1" wide across my screen. The firs band is white, the second is a multi-color, then white again, etc. They appear during boot-up & the only way to get them to go away is a hard boot (& I don't mean with my foot), then it seems to be ok for the session.
This only happens once every few days, but i'm curious to know if it's a hardware issue or what.
The drivers are the ones that came on the installation disc.
The pc is running XP Pro.
Can anyone help?

 

[PrayForDeath]

My first advice would be to install the latest drivers, but if the problem happens before your windows starts, that means it has nothing to do with the drivers.
Then you should check the monitor's cable (the one connecting the monitor to the video card) I had a similar problem which was solved this way, I hope this would help you out.