screen glitches and sometimes will light up but is still black

[teenie]

My computer has a partitioned hard drive and has both windows 8 and windows 7. I have only used windows 7. When I turn it on sometimes it will load all the way to my windows 7 desktop then it says the display graphics quit working and then goes black but the screen is still light up. I have a NVIDIA graphics card. Can someone help me figure out what the problem is and help me fix it.

 

[Faladu]

Welcome to sevenforums.

Fill in all your system specs in your profile, the best that you can.

That sounds like a video card not getting enough power, (or is broken) like if you booted up and forgot to connect a 6pin power connector or PSU could be too weak (broken?) to handle the card.

Or a heat issue on the video card itself, like thermal paste and/or heatsink fan failure.

The monitor itself is still on, totally from it's own power.

I would acquire a Linux distribution LIVE disc and boot to it [makes no changes to hardware at all] and if it runs perfectly for a while, than it's not a power issue. [distrowatch.com for various flavors of Linux, get a Live that fits on CD if download size is issue]

So in summary, probably a video card failure due to lack of power issue or heat, swap the card out for an old one is first thing I would do and clean out case and check all the fans involved.

Replace paste on video card and retest if you don't have a spare old card.
Artic MX-4 is recommended thermal paste, $10 gets you multiple applications of it, I'd replace it anyway.

You able to boot into safe mode?