Wierd Screen Artifacts

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Christoff1503

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Mar 13, 2014
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Hello,

A couple of days ago I downloaded a patch for Starcitizen, after it installed I loaded the game and it crashed to the blue screen of death after about a minute with purple checkered boxes appearing across the screen. I didn't manage to see the error code, however I thought it would be fixed after the restart but upon rebooting the screen was showing horizontal blocks of white lines, when I logged in the computer was sluggish and the purple boxes appeared. Windows kept saying there were missing files but wouldn't run the setup disk and kept coming back as "invalid" when trying to use it.

I have uninstalled the drivers for the graphics card, did a cleansweep and reinstalled which temporarily fixed the issue for 5 minutes before reverting back to the issues. Nvidia manager kept saying there were updates (even though it was the newest driver). Finally resorted to uninstalling windows completely (formatted drive) and after re-install it still does it although now it just recognises the card as a VGA device. Rather than identifying it as the GTX460.

I have come to the conclusion it is a hardware failure but would appreciate any help I can get!

Thanks in advanced.

Chris
 
Solution
coozie7
I think we've exhausted all the other possibilities and seeing artifacts during POST/boot is an almost certain sign of a hardware problem with the card itself.
Sorry, mate, looks like it is, as you first thought, dead.
Before purchasing a replacement try to put another card into your system to confirm all is well with the motherboard and PCI-E slots.
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coozie7

coozie7

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Jun 2, 2007
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Sounds like it's dead right enough.
But sometimes they come back...
Pop off the side panel, boot the system and check the card fan is actually working-it'll only take a few minuets of light loading to overheat the GPU and cause it to artefact like that.
Even if the fan is working, check the card and CPU temperatures, GPUZ for the card and Speedfan, RealTemp, CoreTemp for the CPU.
If possible, try it in another machine or beg/steal/borrow another card to try in your rig.
 
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Christoff1503

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Mar 13, 2014
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Well I swapped over the card into another slot and the artifacts have almost completely disappeared. However I'm getting nvidia kernel mode drive errors quite frequently. Especially when I open the nvidia control panel the artifacts reappear and then disappear.... Is the card dead then?
 
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coozie7

coozie7

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Jun 2, 2007
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Try cleaning the cards gold PCI-E contacts GENTLY by using a pen eraser, not a normal pencil one, but one made to remove pen ink, that type contains a fine abrasive which is very good at cleaning this sort of electrical contact. Once clean, carefully wipe the contacts with a dry cloth to remove any residue.
You don't mention any temperatures, if you've not already done so they need to be checked, as does the fan/s for operation.
 
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Christoff1503

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Mar 13, 2014
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quotfirst=12889369,0,128821]Try cleaning the cards gold PCI-E contacts GENTLY by using a pen eraser, not a normal pencil one, but one made to remove pen ink, that type contains a fine abrasive which is very good at cleaning this sort of electrical contact. Once clean, carefully wipe the contacts with a dry cloth to remove any residue.
You don't mention any temperatures, if you've not already done so they need to be checked, as does the fan/s for operation.[/quotemsg]

I tried switching the card into another slot and at first it seemed to have resolved however, the issue started again. Even during booting it shows the artifacts. I cleaned the fan and checked it's function and it works. I don't think overheating was a factor as the case alone has 7 fans working on full and the card fan normally makes a high pitched sound once it starts increasing past 40%. The room was cool too. Normal operating temps are between 25 and 45 Celsius. It's never gone above 75c. The card itself is around 3 years old and gets used almost all the time.
 
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coozie7

coozie7

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Jun 2, 2007
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I think we've exhausted all the other possibilities and seeing artifacts during POST/boot is an almost certain sign of a hardware problem with the card itself.
Sorry, mate, looks like it is, as you first thought, dead.
Before purchasing a replacement try to put another card into your system to confirm all is well with the motherboard and PCI-E slots.
 
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Solution
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Christoff1503

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Mar 13, 2014
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I have finally bought a new card (gtx 770) and all seems to be working fine again now. Never did get to test in another machine but tried running some stress tests and it would not have any of it so going to go with the probability of a dying card. Thanks for your help :)
 
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