Hi all,

My PC has been running perfectly until recently, but now I often get pixellated lines running across the monitor. They are not always in the same place, nor permanently present. They seem to be either red across dark backgrounds, or blue across white backgrounds. I have uploaded a picture of the former here:
http://alsnotepad.com/files/pics/broken.png

My monitor is relatively a old CRT. Is this likely to be the issue, or is it more likely to be the graphics card? The GFX card is a radeon x800, for which I have the latest drivers. As I say, this is a new problem, and I've had the PC running in its current state for over 6 months. Oh, and the lines don't seem to appear outside of windows.

If it's likely to be related: I also get similar squares of the same red colour when I play Oblivion; playing this has also caused the PC to restart itself a few times.

Many thanks for any help

Alex

Hello greg, welcome to PCHF.

It's definately not the monitor greg, because it's an external device, I wouldn't have been able to see it on your screenshot. I have seen this particular issue several times with ATI cards, and I have to be honest, in each case it turned out to be a hardware issue with the card itself. Before you replace it, it may be worth downloading your latest graphics card drivers from here: Drivers & Software and also make sure that the graphics card is firmly seated in the graphics card slot in your PC.

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Hi madmonkey,

Thanks for the reply, and helpful suggestions. I have the latest drivers, have tried reinstalling them, and tried replacing them with the drivers windows automatically installs, and tried replacing them with the drivers I got with the card (which certainly worked at the time).

I have also now checked that the card is seated all ok, but also to no avail.

One thing I noticed is that if I uninstall the drivers, then when windows first loads with the card it displays everything correctly (though, as you might expect, it can't run games). That is, prior to installing any drivers, I get a normal display. Is this likely to mean that the card is physically all ok and the problem is with the drivers somewhere?

Over the weekend I'll try removing my newer (cheaper) stick of RAM in case that's the issue.

Thanks again,
Alex

Brief update: Turning hardware acceleration in windows a notch downwards fixes the issue. The text for this notch reads: "Disable cursor and bitmap accelerations. Use this setting to correct problems with the mouse pointer, or to correct problems with corrupt images."

Hey Alex,

Well, at that point, your using the very basic Windows default drivers, using minimum settings. I've found that the problem is not aparent, at least not straight away because your making minimal use of the card, no hardware acceleration, or anything like that.

The video card has it's own memory, so replacing your system memory will have no effect. Plus, if you were experiencing onboard memory problems, you would exibit other symptoms such as data corruption and blue screens of death, and errors all over the place depending on severity.

Save your money on memory. If your graphics card is still under warranty, consider sending it back. You can get a replacement x800 card for less than £20 these days. I'm 99.9% certain that the card is the problem here greg, especially since you have ruled out both the driver, and made sure that the card is seated firmly.

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Ok, I'll take a look into replacing the card. Many thanks for the (very!) swift and useful replies.

No prob's Greg. Keep us updated dood, I'll leave this thread open till you post back to say all is ok

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