troubleshoot my display woes

I've recently had some strange display issues, and I was hoping someone could suggest a solution.

The first sign of a problem occurred this evening. While using lightroom, the monitor blinked out as if it had gone to sleep, then blinked back on again. I moved the cursor, and it blinked back off. After a minute of this, the monitor just wouldn't come on again.

I checked the cable connection: fine. I tried another monitor: same issue. I tried restarting / turning off the computer. No resolution. I looked at the video card connecting to the motherboard--looks fine and fully pushed in.

I restart and tap F5, boot into safe mode, and my display works again. I delete the nvidia drivers in control panel (hardware) and restart. All seems well.

After restarting and re-installing NEWLY downloaded NVidia drivers, I re-booted and found the same issue--as soon as it boots to windows, the monitor shuts down.

Oddly enough, after uninstalling and booting back up with the standard display drivers, the screen looked kind of glitchy--85% fine, but just spots of color weirdness, jumping around.

Right now it's fine, but I'm not sure I'm able to install Nvidia drivers.

Any suggestions ?

Okay--because this seems like a hardware issue (it visually reminds me of when as a child I'd turn the Atari system on with the cartridge only partially in), I took the card out, inspected it, blew out the massive amount of dust in the heat sync / fan, and put it back. It seems not to be a temperature issue.

It's back to being glitchy using the standard windows display adapter.

Hm.

Can anyone suggest a troubleshooting method ?

Solved the issue. Removed 1G ram from its slot (with 1 more still in) and no more display oddness. So it seems the problem was corrupted memory and not a corrupted video card, which is totally surprising because ONLY video problems were manifesting. Anyway, it was good chatting with y'all.

Christopher Steven b wrote in post #14909059
Solved the issue. Removed 1G ram from its slot (with 1 more still in) and no more display oddness. So it seems the problem was corrupted memory and not a corrupted video card, which is totally surprising because ONLY video problems were manifesting. Anyway, it was good chatting with y'all.

- I also enjoyed our little chat!


Glad you got it sorted.

^ Haha.

Interestingly enough-and I'll add this for those who find the post and who have similar issues--the garbled video came back: in safe mode, during startup, at all times.

So it wasn't my mainboard memory as I thought it was, even if that cleared things up for a bit. It obviously wasn't my nvidia display drivers either, because it was occurring outside of windows.

The answer: I pulled out my videocard, cleaned out the fan, the heat-sink, using basically a business-card to get in the grooves, and between the heat-sink and whatever is under it (yeah, I'm a real techy..). Blew out the dust and dislodged the dirt buildup that was on the card itself. Boom--solved.