OK so first a little back info on what's happening today.
About a week ago, I was playing WoW on the lowest graphic settings when suddenly my computer started making an odd repetitious clicking noise. Two clicks, then two clicks in the exact same rhythm just a little bit faster immediately after the first two. During these clicking cycles the entire computer lags and everything comes to a screeching halt. Between clicking cycles it worked as normal. Clicking cycles are about 5 - 10 seconds apart and they force me to pull the plug (I can't even shut down because of the clicking cycles), and once they start, they don't stop until I restart the computer.
I tried starting up in Safe Mode with networking and noticed the clicking cycles didn't occur at all. I did intensive virus sweeping/cleaning and found nothing of interest what-so-ever (which is unsurprising because I keep all of my anti-virus/malware/spyware definitions up-to-date and I'm careful about the web-pages I visit).
Continuing to test the problem, I tried several system restores to no avail, and finally tried just seeing if the problem had gone away on it's own and logged in normally, it hadn't. So I decided to mess with my video settings, and lo-and-behold, running at 800x600 res fixed the problem. So I assumed from that point forward that my video card was in it's death throes. Been running normally about a week yesterday and decided to see if I could run at 1024x768 since that's what all my games have been running at (except WoW which is down to 800x600 and the only other game I play is The Sims 3) and I haven't had a problem. It worked for ~24h then my room mate woke me up to inform me that the clicking cycles were back. I told him just to restart the computer and change the res back down to 800x600, and to my utter dismay, it didn't work. I tried a system restore to five days ago, and continued with 800x600, still no dice.
I'm now running safe mode /w networking, the clicking cycles still don't happen when running in safe mode, and I'm fairly positive that it's my video card causing the problem.
I would give you my system specs, but neither DxDiag nor Control Panel > System give me valid information anymore, just N/A for everything important.
EDIT #2: Found my system info in device manager
NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
Vista Home Premium
2gb ram
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+
(Not sure the GHz but probably 3.2).
Tried to update all the drivers, no updates were found for any of them.
My computer is about three years old. I've unfortunately and stupidly neglected to clean the poor lady's guts (more a lack of knowledge and funds than by choice or lazyness).
Can anyone help? I love my little lady and she's LITERALLY all I have to my name and my ONLY source of entertainment, I really need to fix this problem.
Sorry for the editting and double post, I had a censored word in my post that bugged it and kept cutting it off for some reason.
EDIT
One last bit of info I forgot to mention, during the clicking cycles I mentioned one of the fans in the computer gets REALLY quiet. It's still there (I think) but it's very quiet.
About a week ago, I was playing WoW on the lowest graphic settings when suddenly my computer started making an odd repetitious clicking noise. Two clicks, then two clicks in the exact same rhythm just a little bit faster immediately after the first two. During these clicking cycles the entire computer lags and everything comes to a screeching halt. Between clicking cycles it worked as normal. Clicking cycles are about 5 - 10 seconds apart and they force me to pull the plug (I can't even shut down because of the clicking cycles), and once they start, they don't stop until I restart the computer.
I tried starting up in Safe Mode with networking and noticed the clicking cycles didn't occur at all. I did intensive virus sweeping/cleaning and found nothing of interest what-so-ever (which is unsurprising because I keep all of my anti-virus/malware/spyware definitions up-to-date and I'm careful about the web-pages I visit).
Continuing to test the problem, I tried several system restores to no avail, and finally tried just seeing if the problem had gone away on it's own and logged in normally, it hadn't. So I decided to mess with my video settings, and lo-and-behold, running at 800x600 res fixed the problem. So I assumed from that point forward that my video card was in it's death throes. Been running normally about a week yesterday and decided to see if I could run at 1024x768 since that's what all my games have been running at (except WoW which is down to 800x600 and the only other game I play is The Sims 3) and I haven't had a problem. It worked for ~24h then my room mate woke me up to inform me that the clicking cycles were back. I told him just to restart the computer and change the res back down to 800x600, and to my utter dismay, it didn't work. I tried a system restore to five days ago, and continued with 800x600, still no dice.
I'm now running safe mode /w networking, the clicking cycles still don't happen when running in safe mode, and I'm fairly positive that it's my video card causing the problem.
I would give you my system specs, but neither DxDiag nor Control Panel > System give me valid information anymore, just N/A for everything important.
EDIT #2: Found my system info in device manager
NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
Vista Home Premium
2gb ram
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+
(Not sure the GHz but probably 3.2).
Tried to update all the drivers, no updates were found for any of them.
My computer is about three years old. I've unfortunately and stupidly neglected to clean the poor lady's guts (more a lack of knowledge and funds than by choice or lazyness).
Can anyone help? I love my little lady and she's LITERALLY all I have to my name and my ONLY source of entertainment, I really need to fix this problem.
Sorry for the editting and double post, I had a censored word in my post that bugged it and kept cutting it off for some reason.
EDIT
One last bit of info I forgot to mention, during the clicking cycles I mentioned one of the fans in the computer gets REALLY quiet. It's still there (I think) but it's very quiet.