Video Display Issue??

[bluemicrobyte]

So the other night I turned on my computer and behold: a new problem. A lot of icons/images around my desktop were replaced by black space -- for example the start menu items were all replaced by black boxes, until I rolled over them at which point they would appear in place. Last night I changed my screen resolution a few times and it magically corrected itself. Today, the same problem is back and I can't seem to fix it. I ran dxdiag and the DirectDraw tests finished with no problems, but the Direct3D tests didn't work out as well. Instead of showing a spinning cube with the directX logo, I got a spinning cube with corrupt green textures (mostly solid green, with some noise).

I downloaded and installed the lastest video card drivers for my nVidia GeForce 6600 GT OC but that didn't help, now the black boxes are just gray.

I went in to the display properties >> troubleshooting page and lowered Hardware Acceleration one notch at a time, and once it was at 0 the problem went away. But obviously that's not the correct way to fix the issue. So I turned it back up to full and the problem is back.

Other icons/areas that are blacked/grayed out are the smiley face icons in the warboards, post page, parts of the "navigation menu" at the top of any warboards page, some icons in my system tray, and the icons in outlook express.

Help please!!!

edit: and no, I can't think of any changes I've made within the past few days that might have affected this.

edit2: here's a screenshot (I can't tell if it took, saved, or is displayed correctly -- it's a gray box on my screen)
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/4150/videoproblemsvj4.jpg

[DoctorZettabyte]

Hmmm...that's a new one...try re-installing DX 9.0c, that would probably fix it. Since it's D3D, it's either your card, its drivers, your monitor, or DX drivers.

-DocTera

[Shortyland05]

hmm, have you checked your video card fan? it could be overheating and artefacting. I had the same problem, apparently the power cord that powers my fan on my card got stuck in the fan... so I had to send it back to get fixed.

[bluemicrobyte]

1) re-installing directx didn't do much.

2) I'm gonna try re-installing the video card drivers. If I still can't fix it, I'll check the fan.

edit: re-installing them didnt help.....

edit2: I re-installed the original drivers from the CD that came with my video card.... it *appears* to be working, but I'm afraid to restart my computer in fear that the problem will come back like it did this morning =P

[OboeGuru]

nVidia GeForce 6600 GT OC
Made by BFG?

If that's the case, here's my advice: get a new card from a different manufacturer. I had a BFG GeForce 6600GT OC for a year... it died twice, to two different and completely unforseeable problems. It's just a bad product. Sure, the lifetime warranty is nice, but I have no desire to be sending in a broken product for a replacement every 6 months.
The second defect I had sounds somewhat similar to yours; any 3D testures it rendered had tons of lime-green artifacting. Adjusting the settings to lesser resolutions and color depths helped somewhat, but it was still ugly as hell. I can't remember all of the problems it had, but that was what was most noticeable. From what you're describing, I'm guessing you video card's ability to render higher color depths has been compromised. RMA it for a replacement.

If it's not from BFG, then... ah... don't ever get BFG, I guess. Heh.

[Shortyland05]

I got a Galaxy 6600 gt, and got given a Sparkle 6600gt... they any better ;)

[Neo]

I'd suggest popping into safe mode and completely removing the video drivers/video card (aren't you supposed to do this before updating anyways?) and then reboot into normal mode and reinstall the video drivers.

-Neo

[bluemicrobyte]

Oboe - yeah, it's a BFG, but before a few days ago it's run almost flawlessly.

Neo - that's probably a good idea, if the issue comes back I'll try it, but I've successfully restarted once and nothing has happened so far so I'm hoping the issue just goes away....

[WeekendLazyness]

Turning off the computer generally solves problems such as these.

Seriously though, right clicking and hitting "refresh" sometimes makes this go away, but it seems to be a little deeper than that for you.