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Win 7 Crash on Startup (Graphics card problem?)
Hello all,
First post so please be gentle. I've been using my PC fine for the last 3 years. A month or so ago I updated to Windows 7 Ultimate x64. That too has been running fine, then today, after about 3-4 hours of use, in the middle of a game, my PC screen suddenly got weird wavy lines and colours all over it and crashed. Long story short this has now happened about 10 times. Interestingly, I thought it was a graphics card problem, so I tried it on my HD TV (both TV and monitor connected via HDMI) and it did it on the TV too. I then uninstalled the nvidia (8800gt) drivers and restarted my PC. It works fine in safe mode, and in normal mode, but I can't change my resolution to 1680x1050, (it's native resolution) without installing the nvidia drivers. I don't know if the problem is the drivers, (but never had an issue before?) or with resolution, (monitor problem?)
Everytime I do install the nvidia drivers the PC restarts normally, screen looks fine, and the PC seems to run, until I click on anything with the mouse and then the wavy lines and weird colours appear again and I can't CTL-ALT-DEL, I have to hard reset it everytime. Once I left it for 5 mins. and moved the mouse a little every min. or so and that was OK, but as soon as I click on anything, it freezes and artefacts again.
Also, my antivirus flashed red a few times and so did the windows clock in the bottom right corner of the screen, (very odd!) when the PC first starts windows. That made me think it could be a virus, (even though I'm very careful about what I DL), but I had Avast run through a deep clean check and it found nothing. I also tried to get Win 7 to repair itself, which did nothing either! I've tried reinstalling the drivers, using newer and older nvidia drivers and I've tried to install my HG216 monitor driver, but since it's a few years old there is no official Win 7 support and all I have is an inf. file I can't install on Win 7.
Sorry I haven't included a dump file, I know a fair amount about computers but I haven't worked out how to do that yet. Also, since I have to hard reboot everytime, in my event view the only errors listed seem to be about 'power failure', so I don't know if the bug or whatever would show up in the dump file?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I need my PC back ASAP! Thanks guys! :)