Weird hardware problem

[westerberg]

i have a dual boot Vista/Ubuntu system.

Motherboard = GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3.
Graphics card = EVGA 320-P2-N811-AR GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB.
Power Supply = CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX 520W ATX12V v2.2

The other day I left my screen for a few minutes and when I came back the screen was black and wouldn't refresh. I rebooted into Windows safe mode and could see the desktop and operate the gui but in much lower resolution. If I boot into Vista normally, i don't get any video at all. Just a black screen and an alert from my monitor saying "no signal".

When I boot into Ubuntu, basically the same thing happens where i can only operate in low-res graphics.

Naturally, i thought the GeForce card must have conked out. So I bought a replacement at Staples, but the same problem persists with the replacement card.

Is this a motherboard problem? The weird thing is Vista's device manager properly identifies the video card but just won't use it for some reason.

Something like this happened once before, and the problem was dust inside the case. But I've blown all the dust out and still no joy.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[55795642]

What monitor? What resolution are you trying to operate at? What is the Refresh Rate set to?

Boot into safe mode, right-click the desktop and click Properties. Set screen resolution to something low, like 800x600, then boot into normal mode. Any change?

Have you tried resetting the monitor? Does it have an "Auto-Configure" button or function?

 

[westerberg]

What monitor? What resolution are you trying to operate at? What is the Refresh Rate set to?

Boot into safe mode, right-click the desktop and click Properties. Set screen resolution to something low, like 800x600, then boot into normal mode. Any change?

Have you tried resetting the monitor? Does it have an "Auto-Configure" button or function?

The monitor is a ViewSonic VG2230wm. Hfrequency 65 KHz. VFrequency 60 Hz.

I've made some progress, but i'm even more confused than before. Here's what I did:

I booted into Windows safe mode and deleted the Nvidia drivers. Then I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from EVGA's website. I rebooted Windows, and now Windows seems to be operating properly. The monitor is displaying 1680 x 1050 resolution where before it was only displaying 800 x 600 or something.

But Ubuntu is still operating at low-resolution (600 x 400). I tried deleting Ubunut's Nvidia drivers and reinstalling the latest ones, but that did no good. I've tried blowing the dust out of the inside of the case. I've tried removing and replacing the RAM. I tried reinstalling Ubuntu. I tried installing SUSE. None of these had any effect.

Here are the errors from the xorg log:

(EE) No valid initial configuration found.
(EE) Screen(s) found but none have a usable configuration.

I'm pretty much out of ideas. Any help would be appreciated.