Purple vertical Lines on Display & corrupted icons

[smittyy74]

Hello

About a month ago, i noticed that my icons were not displaying properly, they had bits missing. The cursor also looked strange, with what looks like a bar code across it.

I rebooted and noticed purple vertical lines on my monitor as i booted up. When I ALT-TAB you cannot tell which application is which as the the icons have disappeared. Icons in the system tray and shortcut bar (bottom left of screen) are also corrupted. Sometimes when i hover the cursor over them, they appear in full again.

The screen looks normal in some situations, for example the picture i have as wallpaper looks normal. when i stream videos online, they are fine.

I am running windows XP

From memory, this happened just after downloading some microsoft updates. But there is nothing on their site to help. Strangely i installed service pack 3 the other day, and the screen looked normal again, my celebrations were short lived though as next day, the problems were back.

My monitor is not the problem as ive connected it to a laptop and it works fine

Any help will be much appreciated!

My feeling is that it is some sort of driver problem, which are now in conflict with windows XP since the updates.

[Viper81]

Hmm.. Have you tried deleting your icon cache?
It should be located here:

C:\Documents and Settings\"USERNAME"\Local Settings\Application Data\Iconcache.db

I think you then have to manually kill explorer.exe (using task manager) after you do this and then reboot.

Alternatively, you could install TweakUI that has an option to do it all for you (plus many other useful things!)

[Jay]

To me this sounds like a dodgy GPU core. What are your temps like?

[jeffel]

what motherboard are u using.

The newer Nvidia 780i chipsets have a similar problem.Hopefully a bios update should solve the problem.Or else as "Jay" stated it could be the graphics card.

[smittyy74]

thanks for your replies. Appologises for slow response, things have gone from bad to worse, this is no longer my main problem, i cant get on the internet on my PC now, (I am using work laptop to post this). Im getting 'Generic Host Process for Win32 Service has encountered a problem'. Ill start a new thread about this to keep things tidy.

Motherboard is ASUSTek K8VSEDX

From speed fan:

fan 02 2666 rpm
other 4 are at 0

Temp 64 C
Temp2 35C
Temp1 35C
Temp1 126C
Temp2 126C
Temp3 0C
Temp 126C

flame icons next to most temps suggest this is too hot, do you agree ?

Ive not tried clearing icon cache yet, due to the more serious problems ive got.

this more serious prob has started since installing sp3... for some reason i cant do a system restore at all to any dates in the past.

[Jay]

is it an ATi or nVidia card?

I think the 126C are just false readings, there should be a way to read the GPU temps in the nVidia or ATi software.

[jeffel]

is it an ATi or nVidia card?

I think the 126C are just false readings, there should be a way to read the GPU temps in the nVidia or ATi software.

Or it could be true.May be his GPU fan might not be working.

If its 126c (GPU TEMP) then most probably your graphics card might be permanetantly damaged.

[Jay]

Maybe but I still doubt it.

[Jakg]

It definitely sounds like a dodgy graphics card to me!

[smittyy74]

It is an ATI card

Do i need to download the ATI software to read the temps?

[jeffel]

Download ATI tool,HWMonitor etc to check the temps.
hwmonitor

[chooah]

This happened to me with a Radeon 9700 Pro. Unfortunately the card was essentially dying (many years of heavy use) - sounds like yours is also dying. The temps might not tell you much, if one of the memory modules is failing then you will get random screen artifacts.

[smittyy74]

[Back from hols, unfortunately problem still here ]


From HW monitor, I have 3 sets of temps:

Winbond W83697HF
TMPIN0 36C
TMPIN1 36C

Winbond W83791D
TMPIN0 126C
TMPIN1 126C
TMPIN2 126C

AMD Athlon
Core 35C

126 sounds dodge doesnt it?
_________________

Chooah - When you say my card, do you mean my graphics card?

[g-patp]

Thanks for the tip. I had this problem and purchased a new graphics card and monitor. The problem was still there afterwards. Deleting the Icon cache cleared the problem. A tip for others with this problem - I noticed before I fixed the problem that it only affected my user account on this PC, the other users didn't have the problem.

[smittyy74]

Sorry, I never posted my solution for almost 2 years!

I replaced my graphics card (with a second hand one from a friend) and it sorted the problem out. I suspect I have got fan issues too, which may have overheated the card... I get lots of noise from fans. The display issue has not returned.