Hello all, I apologize for the incoming wall of text, just trying to give as much information as I can.
To give a little background on my situation, I built my computer about a year-and-a-half ago, with nearly all new parts (just reused my old hard drive and CD-drive) and it's been working great since then, with 0 issues.
On Sunday I was playing Supreme Commander when all of the sudden my monitor went nuts and the graphics completely froze up, as did much of the computer. I could still move my mouse, but I could not alt-f4, alt-tab, ctrl-alt-del, etc. I restarted my computer and the 2 first splash screens (the mobo and windows ones) had very patterned artifacts on them. Once windows finished loading it seemed fine, but when I opened fire fox, I noticed that the top bar (file edit view etc.) didn't have the usual smooth gradient that it should, but instead had two shades of gray with a pixelated pattern to it. I turned off my computer, turned it back on, and everything seemed fine. I loaded up WoW (to scared to try SupCom) and everything ran fine.
Tuesday morning I woke up, turned on my monitor and was greeted to a 320x240 resolution screen with an error message "NV4_DISP display driver has stopped working". I restarted my computer and attempted to start up WoW, after getting about 3 letters into my password, the computer locked up in a similar fashion to Sunday's lockup. The screen flickered a little, I could move my mouse, but nothing else was responsive. I restarted. Tried again, same thing. I restarted once more and uninstalled my video card drivers, reinstalled (186.18), and restarted. Loaded up a different game, it froze just like WoW, but just as I was about to hit the restart button, the monitor flickered, the game finished loading and everything seemed fine. I exited, loaded WoW, and it worked. It was working fine for about 12 hours, when I was watching a show on the internet when I noticed the same odd pixelated pattern in firefox, the computer froze in the same previous manner, with only the mouse being movable. I restated, loaded up WoW, got in game just fine, got into an instance when suddenly I saw 2 black bars going across the game (I play in windowed mode). I waited a few minutes and the computer "recovered" but when it came back the game looked horrible, missing textures, black textures, wrong textures. I minimized the game, maximized it and it was fine. I finished the instance no problems.
Last night once again, the computer locked up. This time after restating, I uninstalled my driver, ran driver cleaner 1.5 (the only free version I could find), re-installed an older driver (182.50). This is the driver I used from April to October with no issues. Got in game, worked fine, a few hours later it froze for about 15 seconds then recovered, still with graphical issues (though I could only see about two anomalies in game). Once again minimizing, maximizing fixed these.
Today, after getting yet another lock up and restarting, I had the same weird artifacts on the 2 splash screens, but this time windows loaded into 640x480 mode. I restarted and after the windows splash screen nothing happened, the screen was just black, and the monitor power button light was in the "off" mode. I turned off the computer, unplugged the PSU cord from the power strip, dusted out the power strip, unplugged the power strip from the wall, dusted that out, plugged everything back in, turned the computer on, it started up just fine. Finally at my wits end I came here to try and figure out what exactly is causing all my troubles.
Things I have tried/done.
-I ran memtest all night, 7ish hours, 555% 0 errors, so I don't think it’s my ram.
-Uninstaller, reinstalled my video card drivers, several times, trying different drivers (I've heard some bad things about the latest nvidia drivers, so I haven’t tried those yet)
-Dusted everything out.
I initially thought it was my drivers or my video card, but after looking around some it looks like it could possibly be my power supply.
I'm using:
Windows XR-64 SP2
MSI NX8800GTS 182.50 drivers
Corsair VX550W/VX450W PSU
Like I said, this rig has been running perfectly for a year-and-a-half. I'ts handled everything from WoW to Crysis on full with 0 issues until just these last few days.
Any help would be much appreciated.
To give a little background on my situation, I built my computer about a year-and-a-half ago, with nearly all new parts (just reused my old hard drive and CD-drive) and it's been working great since then, with 0 issues.
On Sunday I was playing Supreme Commander when all of the sudden my monitor went nuts and the graphics completely froze up, as did much of the computer. I could still move my mouse, but I could not alt-f4, alt-tab, ctrl-alt-del, etc. I restarted my computer and the 2 first splash screens (the mobo and windows ones) had very patterned artifacts on them. Once windows finished loading it seemed fine, but when I opened fire fox, I noticed that the top bar (file edit view etc.) didn't have the usual smooth gradient that it should, but instead had two shades of gray with a pixelated pattern to it. I turned off my computer, turned it back on, and everything seemed fine. I loaded up WoW (to scared to try SupCom) and everything ran fine.
Tuesday morning I woke up, turned on my monitor and was greeted to a 320x240 resolution screen with an error message "NV4_DISP display driver has stopped working". I restarted my computer and attempted to start up WoW, after getting about 3 letters into my password, the computer locked up in a similar fashion to Sunday's lockup. The screen flickered a little, I could move my mouse, but nothing else was responsive. I restarted. Tried again, same thing. I restarted once more and uninstalled my video card drivers, reinstalled (186.18), and restarted. Loaded up a different game, it froze just like WoW, but just as I was about to hit the restart button, the monitor flickered, the game finished loading and everything seemed fine. I exited, loaded WoW, and it worked. It was working fine for about 12 hours, when I was watching a show on the internet when I noticed the same odd pixelated pattern in firefox, the computer froze in the same previous manner, with only the mouse being movable. I restated, loaded up WoW, got in game just fine, got into an instance when suddenly I saw 2 black bars going across the game (I play in windowed mode). I waited a few minutes and the computer "recovered" but when it came back the game looked horrible, missing textures, black textures, wrong textures. I minimized the game, maximized it and it was fine. I finished the instance no problems.
Last night once again, the computer locked up. This time after restating, I uninstalled my driver, ran driver cleaner 1.5 (the only free version I could find), re-installed an older driver (182.50). This is the driver I used from April to October with no issues. Got in game, worked fine, a few hours later it froze for about 15 seconds then recovered, still with graphical issues (though I could only see about two anomalies in game). Once again minimizing, maximizing fixed these.
Today, after getting yet another lock up and restarting, I had the same weird artifacts on the 2 splash screens, but this time windows loaded into 640x480 mode. I restarted and after the windows splash screen nothing happened, the screen was just black, and the monitor power button light was in the "off" mode. I turned off the computer, unplugged the PSU cord from the power strip, dusted out the power strip, unplugged the power strip from the wall, dusted that out, plugged everything back in, turned the computer on, it started up just fine. Finally at my wits end I came here to try and figure out what exactly is causing all my troubles.
Things I have tried/done.
-I ran memtest all night, 7ish hours, 555% 0 errors, so I don't think it’s my ram.
-Uninstaller, reinstalled my video card drivers, several times, trying different drivers (I've heard some bad things about the latest nvidia drivers, so I haven’t tried those yet)
-Dusted everything out.
I initially thought it was my drivers or my video card, but after looking around some it looks like it could possibly be my power supply.
I'm using:
Windows XR-64 SP2
MSI NX8800GTS 182.50 drivers
Corsair VX550W/VX450W PSU
Like I said, this rig has been running perfectly for a year-and-a-half. I'ts handled everything from WoW to Crysis on full with 0 issues until just these last few days.
Any help would be much appreciated.
