Vid card bad...I think

[kinetica]

Here is a link to a screenshot of what my monitor does.  It gets worse and better as I scroll or do anything really.  Sometimes it's really bad when I turn on my computer or come back from standby and I need to restart (sometimes twice) before it's even usable.  I think the video card is just crapping out on me, but I wanted to get some more knowlesgable opinions.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/856/messedupmonitorvq4.jpg

[homer]

two possibilities...

1. bad monitor
2. bad video card

try your monitor in another computer and see if that still happens. or you can try another known working monitor in yours and see if the problem persists.

[brett74]

i would also open the case up and check for dust too and if there is i would clean it out but homer's right I think it maybe the video card going out do you have a real video card or is it a chip on the motherboard?

[kinetica]

Homer: I have dual monitors and it's doing it on both of them, so I don't think that the monitors are at fault. 

Brett: I just dusted out the video card, ATI Radeon 9800, 2 days ago so it should be pretty dust free.  That seemed to have helped, but now it's worse than it was before.  Originally it was just when I tried to play a game or do something that took up the whole screen, then I would restart and it would be OK.  Then all of a sudden it started doing it all the times, sometimes worse than others.

p.s. Thanks for the very quick help so far

[brett74]

did you update your drivers?

[DwayneZ]

Its iehter you have bad monitor or bad video card.

[homer]

Its iehter you have bad monitor or bad video card.

we already covered that in the first response.

[Broni]

iehter

...and you're lucky, Dias is not around....LOL

[kinetica]

did you update your drivers?

I updated the drivers again (just to be sure, although I think that I had the most recent ones), and it didn't help at all.  It got to the point where it was unusable so I'm not on my laptop.

[AzNVi3t2007]

Yeah try using another monitor.If it does the same thing It may be the video card.

[ultimatum]

Since you have two monitors and both are experience exactly same thing its obvious that its your video card. From what I understand you have a plug-in card, try to get a hold of another video card that you could use and swap them see if that fixes the problem which I hope it will because I remember experience the same with my Nvidia 6600 GT/OC during start-up.

[homer]

i suggest a replacement video card. what video card do you have in there right now?

[ultimatum]

i suggest a replacement video card. what video card do you have in there right now?

I just dusted out the video card, ATI Radeon 9800

[stevejohnson1958]

If you boot into Safe Mode...do you experience the same issue?

[homer]

i suggest a replacement video card. what video card do you have in there right now?

I just dusted out the video card, ATI Radeon 9800

thanks for pointing that out.

kinetica, i suggest purchasing a replacement card as long as the video card does not exceed about $70. reason being, AGP motherboards are fairly old and its really not worth spending money on old technology.

for example: you have an old beat up car and the transmission dies. the transmission is going to cost you $500 to replace whereas a brand new car costs only $1000. sure its cheaper to buy the new transmission, but for an extra $500 you can buy a brand new everything.