Need some tech advice

[Fiendishone]

Ok here's the story:

Have an ATI Radeon x1600 video card, 512mb, pci express x16 that I've been using for a few years now. Here and there I'd have an occasional hiccup, and POL would crash and I get a VPU recovery error.

So a friend on vent thats WAY more computer literate then I am helped me get the issue resolved (some ati catalyst control center, update drivers, blah blah, shit if I know).

Well the same error is back with a vengance. The same friend suggested going into the bios and switching to the onboard VC, however when I went to the settings, I noticed that it was set to PCI, not PCI-E. So after I had changed the settings to PCI-E, everything seemed to work just fine.

For about a day. Then it went worse. So I went into the bios settings to switch to the onboard VC, booted up, and the boot process was a bit more laggy then usual, and I find out that I get the prompt for "new device found" assuming its for the onboard VC. After a few minutes, it says something like "device may not have been installed properly", I can't recall offhand as it was a few days ago. Then it prompts me to restart since new hardware was installed.

Then it got ugly. Upon restart, the screen went black, and my monitor went to sleep. After 2-3 reboot attempts I finally got back into the bios screen and switched back to PCI setting. Rebooted, and the screen is so broken, it's like it's zoomed to 20 times the usual. I have to drag my mouse around the screen to get to the desktop icons. I tried to set the bios to onboard and physically remove the video card from the CPU and it does the same thing, after it boots, it prompts the safe mode screen if I so choose to, then after a few minutes, the monitor goes to sleep and says to set the resolution to 1280x1024 @60hZ (I have a 19 inch lcd) which is the standard settings I've always had it on.

My question is this: Is it truely the video card that's causing the error? Is it worth the $40 to buy this? Newegg.com - XFX PVT86SYANG GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Again I'm not the most computer literate person out there so that's why I'm posting on here for help. Thanks.

[Cephius]

First thing I'd do is to go into safe mode with networking and wipe out your video card drivers. Use driver sweeper or a similiar program to do this as it'll get all the drivers and registry entires. From there, download the latest drivers again, and reboot into normal Windows. Reinstall your drivers, reboot, and see if that fixes your problem.

[Avanarius]

Sounds like the monitor is getting forced to a resolution that it can't display so it's shutting off. Had it happen to me before and it usually is not a problem with the video card.

To fix it I had to go into safe mode, uninstall the graphics card drivers, then go into normal mode and reinstall.

[Olo401]

I don't think it'll reach the point where you need to get a new gfx card, but if you do a GeForce 8400 is about the same quality card as what you have now.. the memory on the card is a little faster but the interface is only 64-bit where the x1600 is 128-bit so it's a tradeoff.

If you wanted, you could get a PCI-E 2.0 16x card and it would work fine - just at half speed. In that case I'd say look at something with a newer design like a Radeon 4670 or a GeForce 9500GT.

[Fiendishone]

i cant get into safe mode for whatever reason, when i attempt to, the monitor goes to sleep asking to adjust signal input to 1280x1024.

about 2 steps from either A) doing a full systems recovery which would suck ALOT or B) goin Office Space on my PC and sayin fuck it all i don't need a god damn computer.

leaning more towards B atm. . . . . .

[Gippo]

reboot in normal mode, forget safe mode. hit the windows button in lower left and hit the "pause break" key at the same time, click hardware tab > device manager.

open display adapter, find your radeon card, right click > uninstall > restart pc.

reinstall the card with drivers off their site > then adjust your display settings