Windows 7: Encountering this on a newly reformatted windows 7 PC.

Hello everyone.
I would like to consult here this problems which I have been encountering lately.
Firstly, here's my PC specs:

board: ASUS P5PKL AM SE
cpu: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93ghz
ram: 2x2gb Kingston ddr2 800mhz (newly bought)
gpu: Radeon hd 6570 1gb ddr3 (newly bought)
psu: generic 600w (newly bought)
hdd: Seagate 1TB - os installed here (newly bought)
Seagate 2TB - (as backup for files)




I successfully installed windows 7, after that I installed first an anti virus, I was a previous ESET user, but upon looking at reviews I settled with Comodo Internet security. I then installed Tuneup Utilities 2012, then other various programs, firefox,Idm, my huge archive of old games.



I noticed that there would appear on the screen some distortions/blurry lines/runny lines from time to time. If I would try to reset the settings on the monitor itself, the lines would either get worse or simply reduce. I also tried to change the resolution in the AMD Catalyst control manager, and in the screen resolution setting, but it doesn't permanently solve my problem. I tried changing the refresh rate, but to no avail. What's also wierd is that these "lines/distortions" (sorry, don't know how to really classify them) only appear when I am on the desktop and doing simple tasks like browsing the web, playing windowed games like scrabble, pinball, etc. but whenever I would play full games like Stronghold, Red Alert 3, Need for Speed, etc. there seems to be no signs of the lines or distortions that are occurring. Sometimes these lines/distortions would occur on the borderlines of a window, sometimes on a specific side of the screen.. right now as I'm writing this there seems to be no distortions, (current setting is 60hz refresh rate) but when I change it to 75, the distortions would appear again. I hope you get what I am talking about..

What seems to be the problem? Hardware or software?
The video card has updated drivers, I tried doing system restores, I tried uninstalling the gpu driver and reinstalling again, removing the vga cord,
(I can't reformat again since my dvd drive's condition is getting worse, I was only lucky that my Windows 7 install was successful.)

Please try to help me! Thanks a lot!

Did you install the drivers for your hardware manually (ie: from the manufacturer websites) or did you let Windows detect and install the drivers?

as I have done before, the windows installed the drivers automatically, except for the gpu driver which I have installed and downloaded on AMD's website.

I would remove tune up utilities.
It's pretty much useless in windows 7 anyway. My experience thus far with tweak utils and windows 7 is that they cause a vast number more problems than they solve.

I totally agree with maguscreed. Windows 7 doesn't want or need such programs.

actually let me clarify that
I would undo all the changes that tune utils has made
...then I would remove it.

You chose exactly the programs which give the most reported problems with Windows 7:

Commodo is crapware that causes all kinds of problems only solved by uninstalling it. Use Microsoft Security Essentials with the Windows 7 firewall.

Tune Up Utilities is a tweaking suite which will mess up Windows 7 since it does not need or tolerate compound tweaking.

Use CCleaner and perhaps a good 3rd party defragger like Puran boot-time defrag is all you need.

friends,
I have done as you have said, I removed Comodo and replaced it with Microsoft Security Essentials. however, I have kept Tuneup Utilities as of the moment. No improvement has been happening yet, the same problem still occurs. When I'm on the desktop, those distortions/lines would still appear, but whenever I'm playing full games everything's running flawlessly regardless of resolution. (1440x900, or 1024x768)..

I also restored the bios settings to default, but nothing's still happened. I found there a menu that allows me to disable something with the gpu's physical settings, but I haven't tried that yet since things might get worse..

any more help please? Thanks a lot..

At the end of the day it is in fact your call as to what to do with the util package. I would seriously consider the decision again though, you have about 70 years of combined tech experience telling you to dump it. I would actually undo whatever changes it has made before removing it too.

Sorry if you like the app but we really do just see nightmarish problems caused by those things with this version of windows.

ok, thanks. I'd follow your advice and remove Tuneup 2012, but how do I undo those changes tuneup has made? I only disabled some programs at startup, and as far as I could recall I've done it on "msconfig". other tasks that tuneup has done was to clean the registry.. will it be safe to remove it at that?

Right now, I'm playing Stronghold Crusader Extreme. whenever I press the windows button on the keyboard, I get back on the desktop and these distortions appear. when I go back to my game however, the monitor's display is perfectly good...