My video card is on its last legs.

Was playing a game when my PC decided to show me a blue screen. Something like "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA". When I restarted my PC the fancy motherboard logo had all these little, weird artifacts all over it, and as my PC was booting up all these characters (mostly "$"s) appeared randomly all over the screen making everything absolutely incoherent. When it got to the "Would you like Windows 7 to boot in safemode?" screen the weird artifacts and crap disappeared, but everything looked kind of blurry. Safemode started up just fine, still oddly blurry, so I restarted my PC. And the same weird crap happened again. When I started it up normally the PC crashed again when it was supposed to show the login screen. I think that's because I run two monitors and when my video card tried to switch everything to the main one it couldn't handle it.

I ended up uninstalling my video drivers, scrubbing the registry, and reinstalling them. That seemed to work for about a day, but when I started my PC up this afternoon it happened again.

Is there anything other than my video card that could possibly be doing this? I'm pretty poor at the moment, so I'd rather not fork out money for one problem when it turns out that I had another.

What kind of motherboard are you using? If you have a cheap generic and something is wrong with the PCI-E 2.0 slot or something like that, could be causing problems. If you have previous video card lying around, I suggest you switch out the video cards and experiement a bit. If you know the previous card is still functional and works, and nothing happens with your computer, it is the video card. If your other card starts to freak out and cause problems as well it could be the motherboard.

Also if you do not do this already, I suggest purchasing a compressed air canister from Office Max or Best Buy and gid rid of any dust in your computer.

stick it in the oven....

stick it in the oven....

DJ8WORK

I did as DarkGamer007 suggested and hunted around and managed to dig up a Geforce 7600GT. I'd forgotten how ridiculously big my 9800GTX is. Anyway, I managed to get my PC to boot normally with the 9800GTX and then picked Oblivion (because I knew the 7600GT could handle it) and booted it up. Played a few minutes before my PC crashed again. Then I switched out the 9800 for the 7600 and did tried Oblivion again. Played maybe 30-45 minutes, no crash. So yeah, I'm pretty certain it's my video card now.

I did some quick checking on Newegg and it seems like the Geforce 460GTX is the best deal on video cards under $200. Is that about right? Any other suggestions on that front?

Edit: Holy ****, and here I was thinking DJ8WORK was being a dick. The problem with doing that with the 9800 is the huge plastic cover over it. I'd have to figure out how to pry that off. Maybe I'll do that.

I did as DarkGamer007 suggested and hunted around and managed to dig up a Geforce 7600GT. I'd forgotten how ridiculously big my 9800GTX is. Anyway, I managed to get my PC to boot normally with the 9800GTX and then picked Oblivion (because I knew the 7600GT could handle it) and booted it up. Played a few minutes before my PC crashed again. Then I switched out the 9800 for the 7600 and did tried Oblivion again. Played maybe 30-45 minutes, no crash. So yeah, I'm pretty certain it's my video card now.

I did some quick checking on Newegg and it seems like the Geforce 460GTX is the best deal on video cards under $200. Is that about right? Any other suggestions on that front?

Edit: Holy ****, and here I was thinking DJ8WORK was being a dick. The problem with doing that with the 9800 is the huge plastic cover over it. I'd have to figure out how to pry that off. Maybe I'll do that.

SeriousSean

[QUOTE="SeriousSean"]

I did as DarkGamer007 suggested and hunted around and managed to dig up a Geforce 7600GT. I'd forgotten how ridiculously big my 9800GTX is. Anyway, I managed to get my PC to boot normally with the 9800GTX and then picked Oblivion (because I knew the 7600GT could handle it) and booted it up. Played a few minutes before my PC crashed again. Then I switched out the 9800 for the 7600 and did tried Oblivion again. Played maybe 30-45 minutes, no crash. So yeah, I'm pretty certain it's my video card now.

I did some quick checking on Newegg and it seems like the Geforce 460GTX is the best deal on video cards under $200. Is that about right? Any other suggestions on that front?

Edit: Holy ****, and here I was thinking DJ8WORK was being a dick. The problem with doing that with the 9800 is the huge plastic cover over it. I'd have to figure out how to pry that off. Maybe I'll do that.

gmaster123

[QUOTE="DJ8WORK"]

stick it in the oven....

tequilasunriser

Edit: Holy ****, and here I was thinking DJ8WORK was being a dick. The problem with doing that with the 9800 is the huge plastic cover over it. I'd have to figure out how to pry that off. Maybe I'll do that.SeriousSean

lol...wtf frying video cards. crazy ppl aha. desperate times calls for desperate measures i guess :D

lol...wtf frying video cards. crazy ppl aha. desperate times calls for desperate measures i guess :D

kaitanuvax

hahaha yeah there are some wacky lengths people will go to too keep a product working..

seriosuly though hd 5770 or gtx 460.. its jsut that simple..

It seems like putting my video card in the oven and cooking it for a little while actually worked. I'm getting some artifacting in games, but my PC doesn't seem to be spitting out blue screens any more. I'll still probably upgrade my video card. Not sure how long this one will be hanging around long after all this crap.