Monitor filled with red dots and streaks

[garryw121]

Hi,

i'm not sure at all what the problem with my computer is but a few nights ago my monitor was filled with red dots and streaks it then froze and crashed, i was able to turn it on after but as soon as dots appeared it happened again, my monitor also keeps entering power save mode unbidden, i opened my computer and cleared out the dust to see if it would help but didnt, it has got to a stage where the dots and crashes appear before the welcome screen. If anyone could shed some light on this.

 

[Tmagic650]

Are you using a video card or on-board video?

 

[ahujahbti]

hi
i think ur RAM is loose in the slot . just tight it once and check out..

 

[SNGX1275]

Reseat your video card. (with the computer off of course)

 

[garryw121]

thx for the feedback, i'm not great with computers so by video card do u mean graphics card? and if so im using a nVidia gforce 8800GTX (i think thats right).

 

[SNGX1275]

Yep thats what I meant. Make sure all the power cables to the card are properly seated too. If you've done all that it probably means a bad PSU (not getting enough power) or a bad video card. I would expect that if the PSU wasn't supplying enough power to make things successfully work on boot then there would be an alarm (like there is on my 7800GS if I forget to hook up the power, I also have an 8800GTS, but have never hooked it up without the power cables).

 

[garryw121]

when the computer crashes with the error screen i get the cause of the prob nv4_disp according to the dell technichian my graphics card is broken as i reseated the graphics card with no luck so thx for all feedback =)

 

[SNGX1275]

I agree with the tech, nv4_disp is almost always a driver error, but since you have these problems before the driver loads that points to a hardware problem.