Windows 7: Dollar signs after the motherboard splash screen

Hey guys, tonight I started getting $ signs all over the screen after the Asus motherboard splash screen during post. The strange thing is that I just started the computer. I was not using it at all and it was off since Friday night.

After windows boots, I login then I get squares of varying colors on the screen. green purple, etc...

sometimes I get a message from windows that the nvidia driver has recovered for a crash but the screen keeps flickering and i got the squares everywhere.

all is good in safe mode.

I removed the drivers and had windows detect the card on its own but the issue persists.

I also got a couple blue screens while this was happening, could a faulty video card cause blue screens?

Could a virus target video card drivers?

The strange thing is that it was all fine Friday. No issues at all and suddenly this started to happen. and all last week I was playing games such as crysis and boarderlands with no issues at all.

System specs:
P5K|Q6600 G0|4GB DDR2-800|3.5TB|8800GT|Audigy2|HX620|Cosmos 1000|V2400W|Windows 7 64-bit

I never over-clocked the 8800gt.



Its a bfg 8800gt and I'm suspecting it is the video card, am I right?

Thanks for the help.

I think your GPU is failing, try reseating it and see if this helps, if you can try it in another PC or a GPU from another PC in your system that would give you a lot of information as well.

What driver are you using for your card?
Have you tried possibly blowing out the fan on the card, and leaving the side panel open on the case just to eliminate the possibility of heat being the issue.
Unfortunately Video cards fail and most of the time for no apparent reason.
Do you have another card you can try in your system? Maybe borrow one from a friend, or try yours in a different system. To see if the problem reoccurs.
This way we can narrow down the possibility of a hardware failure.
You might also just want to check all your cable connectiions and poassibly reseat the card.
Fabe

I tried it in another PC and did the same thing.

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Very strange how it suddenly happened. we had no lightning storms, no power interruptions. It was working fine Friday night, I did not use the computer all day Saturday and when I came home late Saturday night and started the computer that when it happened.

The only difference is that I plugged in an old PC and installed Windows 98 on it to play some Quake and Quake II and hooked it up to the same monitor using VGA. My main computer with the fried video card is connected via DVI.

Would that old computer somehow introduce a faulty current that leaks into my main computer and damages the video card?

Quote:

Would that old computer somehow introduce a faulty current that leaks into my main computer and damages the video card?

This is something I've never heard of.
So in this thread your card is bad so we can mark it as resolved? Fabe

One question before you close it, would a power bar cause the issue?

I'm only asking since I plugged in another computer into the same power bar and it kept turning off on its own.

I took that computer to work to see if it turns off on its own and it did not. So i got another power bar for home and the computer did not turn off.

So my question is that would a power bar damage a video card in one computer and cause another computer to completely turn off?

Well you definatly had a defective power strip and was causing the computer to shut down, but to say that it would only effect the video card and not other compents I would have to say no.
It would be more likely that the power source from your power supply to the video card was defective in your power supply which doesn't seem to be the case.
Atleast this is my take on it. Fabe