Achilleas.k

I have an eVGA FX5700 Ultra. My PC has been working fine (and is constantly on) since I got back home from Uni in June. Last night I was playing a game and everything was working smoothly until I closed the game and started up a different one. Specifically, as soon as I started the other game (World of Warcraft), my computer started functioning in small bursts at the login screen. It was as if the screen was only being updated once every 2 seconds, even the mouse pointer position. I immediatly closed the game and checked my CPU and memory usage. Everything was normal: CPU utilization was at 0-1% (and wasn't jerking up and down) and memory utilization was steadily low. Additionally no hard drive activity was taking place. The mouse pointer on the other hand was still behaving the same way, updating it's position once every 1-2 seconds. I did what any Windows user would do in such a situation and restarted the PC.
After that, one of two things kept happening on subsequent reboots: either the PC froze on the Windows loading screen (the blue bar stopped scrolling and hard drive activity stopped) or the PC would automatically restart while loading.
I can now succesfully start Windows in safe mode and also, I can start Windows in normal mode, but only when I have removed the VGA drivers from the device manager through safe mode. Trying to reinstall the drivers (either the latest set or older ones) results in either the computer rebooting automatically, halfway through the installation or, the computer freezing and the screen filling up with a strange character (the character is similar to those smiley face characters you can type in command prompts, and it fills the screen from top to bottom and across). If I run the driver intallation program in safe mode, it finishes normally.
After the driver installation attempt (either crashing in normal mode or completing in safe mode), I have to remove the VGA drivers from the device manager again, through safe mode, to access Windows in normal mode.
Later on I discovered that my VGA fan wasn't working. I attatched a working fan to the VGA (well sort of, all I did was screw an old case fan onto the VGA heat sink) and needless to say the problem remains the same.
Sorry for the long post but I figured some of the details may be important. The short version of it all though is that I can't startup Windows normally with the VGA drivers installed and if I attempt to install the drivers, the computer crashes.

Doby

Most times I have seen this ( unable to install video drivers or installing drivers make video freeze) its a bad card.

Can you barrow another card to try?
Does your motherboard have onboard video you can try?

Achilleas.k

No on board video.
I was going to try and get another video card to try it out, just waiting for everyone to wake up (it's 6 AM here) and thought I'd post a message to ask for another opinion.
It probably is just a bad unit, it's over 4 years old I think so it doesn't surprise me. I'll post back after I have tested a different VGA.

Thanx for the quick reply.

Doby

One other note, when you try another video card make sure you uninstall the video drivers from the old card thru add remove programs so there are no conflict's

Achilleas.k

I just went out and got a new VGA. Everything is working fine now. Too bad I had to downgrade (got a FX5500 now :( ).
I didn't wanna spend too much money on my old PC and I know I could've gotten something much better for the same money from eBay or some online store... PC hardware is so expensive where I live, but I didn't want to wait two weeks for it to be delivered.

Oh well. All is well that ends well. Thanx for the help!

Doby

Glad your all fixed