Bad Video Card?

[David R Nichols]

  My friend just gave me his computer and it's only a year old but, whenever i turn it on only the microsoft loading screen at the beginning of the start up shows up clearly like it would on any other windows xp comp.  After the load screen the screen becomes all jumbled up and there seems to be multiple screens all transposed onto one another across my monitor and i can't hardly see the mouse or read any of the text on screen.  I plugged my monitor into my old computer so, it's definatley the computer which has the errors.  If you can look past my vague description of what is wrong with my comp and tell me some suggestions i can try to fix my problem your help would be greatly appreciated. TY

[merlin_2]

go in to safe mode f8 on boot keep tapping it...then type..dxdiag in the run box...it maybe a corupt vid driver causing it..hth.m_2 and  hopefully not the phantom sp2..

[Raptor]

Did you try setting the resolution a bit lower in Safe Mode?

[merlin_2]

and the question is what pc is this and make and maybe also what operating system?



see below for suggestions































a suggestion to the admin maybe someone could come up with a mulit choice of o/s...or a separate post for winxp etc...just like apple..save server space...just delete one of the scripts for other for example..just a whim.that way hopefully we know what we are dealing with..winxp a good system if? not enough time at the present to say.......

[David R. Nichols]

TY you for the help merlin...
i went into safe mode and ran dxdiag and came across some problems.
1. Sound- Results: failure at step 3(direct sound create):HRESULT = 0x8878000a ( the request failed because directsound resources, such as the priority level, were already in use by another caller)

2. Display- using generic video driver
              - direct 3d functionality not available
I was wondering where i can find the video driver that it is not reading, that might fix my display problems.

some critical errors i found were...
    windows cannot find monitor.exe
when i first ran dxdiag it had problems accesing direct sound, direct3d, and directmusic

the computer is an Emachines my friend got from Wal-Mart...

if i can figure out exactly what these error messages mean im sure i can find the source of the problem...thanks for all the help!  

[merlin_2]

i maybe wrong but the emachine should have come with a recovery disk.....do panic i am not asking you to re-install...if you load the recovery disk....<browse it> on there should the video/*sound* drivers try reload them...if you require in on your system type msinfo32 in the run box...a question did your friend have this pc a setup for mutimonitors? what happens in safe mode f8 key on booting  keeping tapping it and chose last good config...