You can Try the Video Card Stability Test

If you can hear Skype and MSN starting up then I think you can rule out CPU. Your problems do sound like Video card.. since you have no Video! You have tried using a different screen?

I tried the stability test and benchmarked at 1545fps, im not sure what this tells me,

Thanks

The problems i have are very strange, i can switch my comp on and i will get nothing on the screen, i will switch off and on and it will power up normally asking me if i would like to load windows in safe mode.

Then gaming for instance i will switch COD4 on and it will run terribly with massive slowdown and noise feedback, so i will switch the comp off and on and power up COD4 and it runs almost perfectly.

Although even when its running smooth on singleplayer if i move over to multiplayer its really bad slowdown, absolutely unplayable.

I have two screens and they both work the same so thats not an issue

Thanks

Might wan't to try that stability test when your actually expereiencing the problem.

One thing I would make sure of though, is that the slot next to the PCI-E slot is not being use. If there is a card in that slot, try moving it to a slot further away from the graphics card.

If you have received any error messages at any time, blue screens of death, or anything like that, it's important to let us know, as this will help us to identify your problem for certain.

I can't think of what else could cause those symptoms to be honest pop, and the only way you really going to know for sure is by testing another VGA card in that slot, either from another PC (poss a friends), or some shops will let you return the card after. There is no way that *you* would be able to test that card at a hardware level. If the card is damaged due to overheating/overclocking, it will exibit all kinds of weird and wonderful symptoms, from no video output, to cutting out and restarting, to poor performance.

Hi Guys

I tried that stability test and when the p.c is running bad i get a readout of around 1500 fps but when the p.c is running ok then i get a readout of 2200 fps, and i never change anything , it just seems to depend on what mood the p.c boots up in.
I have spoken to the previous owner of the p.c and he says he has never overclocked it but claims that the graphics card did blow up after a month and he took it back to the shop and got a replacement, but i don't believe anything the guy says anyways.
I had a look inside the p.c and it the graphics card stretches pretty much the length of the p.c so i cant see where else you could move it too, i could post a picture on here if that helps you see things.
Other things i have noticed are that sometimes i can double click a shortcut to start up a game and it will sit doing nothing, until i eject and reinsert the disk then it will do something
Thanks

You must have quite a small PC there pop for the graphics card to take up that much space. Yeah, a picture would be good. You won't need to move the graphics card, but is there anything in card seated next to it?

Your shortcut problem will be unrelated. Normally this is read problem with the drive. Sometimes a cleaning disk will help. Next time you have that problem, see if you can see the files on that drive in My Computer. And also, press [CTRL] + [ALT] + [DEL] and see if you can see "iw3mp.exe" (If your playing the multiplayer of COD4). If your unable to read from the disk, and you can see this in your Processes tab, this would indicate reading problems either with a particular disk (may be scratched or dirty), or with the heads of the drive itself. I've seen some drives that would actually get stuck at the initial spin cycle.