PC Problem/ Video Card Problem?

The other day i was playing a PC game (Halo: Combat Evolved) my screen froze with a few pink pixilations on my screen. I rebooted by PC and seemed to work fine. About 10 minutes into a video i was watched the same thing occurred... screen froze and there were tiny pink pixilations on the screen. So again i rebooted, this time when rebooting was almost complete, right before the choose use screen my monitor went black and that were it stayed. So once again i rebooted and the same thing occurred. I booted in safe mood and it booted fine. I uninstalled my graphics card in device manager to try and reinstall w/ drivers. Booted computer in regular mode and it booted fine. Every time I try to reinstall drivers for my video card off of the CD, but the CD failed to load. So i installed the drivers off of nvidia's website. Once installed i rebooted and again the black screen. SO after uninstalling the video card in safe mode the only display adapters that are being shown is the Standard VGA Graphics Adapter. I am unable to get my video card to be recognized by my computer. Any body have any ideas...or at least point me in the direction of a good troubleshooting forum...thanks.



PC SPECS:



OS: Windows Vista Home Premium (64-Bit)

Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 4000+ 2.1GHZ

Memory: 1GB

Video Card: nNivia GForce 8500GT 512MB

System Model: TForce 550 SE

BIOS: Phoenix: AwardBIOS v6.00PG|||It sounds like the graphics accelerator failed on your video card. Swap a different card in and see if you have the same problem.|||Yeah it sounds like your card finally bit it. It won't cost much to upgrade, believe me, I should know. I use my old Palit 8500 GT as a diagnostic tool! LOL



You have 2 choices. One is to get this card to replace it.

nVidia GeForce 8500 GT 256MB - $40:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



The other (which is MUCH better) is to replace it with an ATi Radeon HD 4550.

ATi Radeon HD 4550 1GB - $45

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



Now ordinarily I tell people to NEVER get a video card that is weaker than a Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 260 with 1GB because the card won't be strong enough to ever use more than 512MB. In this case, MSI has some special price going on because this card isn't more expensive than all the other HD 4550's with 512MB, PLUS, it has a $15 mail-in-rebate so it ends up costing $30 and becomes cheaper than all the 512MB cards.. That's $10 cheaper than the 8500 GT. Let's see how they compare in performance, shall we?



nVidia GeForce 8500 GT:

Passmark Score: 241

Passmark Rank: 310th in the world

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_…



ATi Radeon HD 4550:

Passmark Score: 359

Passmark Rank: 209th in the world

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_…



Both cards require a 300W power supply so if you've been ok with the GeForce 8500 GT, you'll be ok with the Radeon HD 4550. If you can't afford $30, for an improved video card, I don't know what to tell you! LOL|||Have you tried the latest nVidia drivers for your card?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvis…

Your CD probably has old drivers on it. I am not saying that is the problem but the newest drivers are worth a shot.

If that does not work and the problem still persists you should get a new card.