Graphic Card Problem (nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4600

Hi all

Been having some fun and games today with my desktop pc. Came home from the inlaws to find that the fancy "aquarium" screen saver we have had crashed and the machine was totally locked up. So reset the machine and rebooted, just thinking it was one of those "windows moments"!

Windows came up no problems, browsed the net for a while with not problem, then tried to load Guild Wars. Login screen appeared...and it was all corrupted. "Hmmmm" was my first reaction which, after 3 hours of messing around, turned into total frustration.

I've tried reinstalling the latest drivers for the graphic card and the latest version of Direct X 9.0c, both from 2 different sources. I've also tried 2 different restore point (which were created back in mid Feb). Hasn't made a blind bit of difference, GW still locks up and the screen saver freezes the machine - interestingly, all those fancy flying text, 3d object etc screen savers that come with XP also appear corrupted and lock up.

I've run dxdiag and looked at the Display tab and ran the tests for both DirectDraw and Direct 3d.....the machine passed the tests!!! "Woot" and off I went to play GW....the pc locked up again on the login screen. I tried reinstalling GW and I got a very worrying "you have a critical error" message....but no more details than that (very helpful!).

Basically, I have no problem surfing etc (I'm using the pc to type this) but as soon as I try and do something with 3d graphics, the machine throws a wobbly. My conclusion so far is that it's not a software issue, but that my graphics card is borked. So, is there any other way I can test that the card is bust apart from the dxdiag route? Or do I just bite the bullet and go get another card and hope that it'll solve the problem?

Cheers

Rich

Does your PC have a onboard video card?
Just for kicks, plug it in there and try to run GW, just to see if its really your graphics card.

Have you opened up your computer and looked at the card while the computer is on? It could be the fan is dying...or...is real dirty and needs cleaning.

Cheers guys

Firstly, no, no onboard graphics so I can't test that. Haven't opened the back up yet (as I'm at work), so will try that tonight when I get home. Someone else suggested it might be the fan so I think that's going to be my first port of call as the PC had been on for about 4 hours prior to me noticing the problem, so overheating is a possibility.

Cheers

Rich

Ok...make sure the computer is OFF before you open it up. Then while you can see inside of the box, then turn it on.

Also another little known fact. If you are going to take out a card, you can turn off the computer, unplug it, then push the power button and hold it and that will drain the rest of the "trickle charge" out of the system.

Hit the nail on the head guys - the fan had fallen off the chip!!! Clipped it back in place and everything is working again

Thanks for the help

Rich