extremely bizarre problem

[freagul]

I wish I could have given this a better title but I wouldn't know what to put.

How many of you remember the old days with cartridge games such as the old NES, how sometimes when the games or the system got dusty, you would turn it on and get dazzling colors and bizarre patterns, strange plaid squares of color? that is happening to my computer. and yes i've tried blowing the dust off.

when i boot up, my screen displays those same sorts of crazy colors and patterns. at first i tried to just reboot until it went away which would only take one or two tries, but now i have to wait for it to load into windows like that, then reboot and it will usually be ok but sometimes it will need one more reboot. after that it is fine and works without a glich for the rest of the day. i can reboot fine and everything, but the problem comes back the next day, presumably because everything has had a chance to go cold overnight.

i'm running a two years old radeon 9800 aiw, and a four year old viewsonic p225. i mention age because it might be age, i don't know, i'm sort of at a loss for what might be causing this. and since i only have a couple minutes before things warm up enough for it to go away, troubleshooting will be sort of hard.

if anyone knows what is going on i would really appreciate the assistance, its starting to take longer and longer for it to go away and i worry it might be a symptom of a greater problem, or that i will soon have to replace one of the most expensive components in my system. thanks.

 

[inotocracy]

Dust is a possibility, try reseating the card and see if that helps. It could be the card is just on the way out, are you overclocking it?

 

[Commander Suzdal]

Something is not making good contact until heat expands it enough to fit tightly. Try re-inserting your video card, it may have worked a little loose in its slot over time.

It may also be a so-called "cold solder" problem, where the soldering of one of the pins on your videocard's components has developed a crack and is no longer making good contact, until it heats up and the expansion of the solder causes it to close the gap. If this is the problem, you probably don't have any option other than replacement, unless you or a friend are VERY good with a multimeter and a soldering iron.

 

[freagul]

Dust is a possibility, try reseating the card and see if that helps. It could be the card is just on the way out, are you overclocking it?

not ocing, and already tried reseating. you're both probably right that the card has gone bad somehow, that's just what i was afraid of. ugh. well i have a couple extras i can test with to make sure. thanks.