New
#1
Is my video card shot?
Yesterday I awoke to find my computer locked up on the (Aurora) screen saver. First time it had happened, so I didn't think too much of it. Did a hard reboot, and everything was fine. Went to work, came home to find the same lock up. This time, the reboot no so fine. . . on the black driver loading screen, there is all sorts of odd characters floating about, then when windows loads, the resolution is way off, but will not allow me to change it, and there are horizontal squiggly lines across the screen. Though my monitor driver (Samsung SyncMaster) appears to be installed fine, Windows only recognizes a "Default Monitor" when attempting to change the resolution, which is stuck at 800x600.
Does not appear to be a software/malware issue, haven't installed any software/hardware/drivers lately, so I suspect it must be a hardware issue? Sound like my video card (8800GT) may be failing/died?
I have an older comp collecting dust in the closet, so I'll swap out the card to see if that's the issue on my weekend, but I'd like to hear some opinions as well.
Thanks , and happy holidays to all!
Russell