Graphics card problem

[MinusII]

Ok so i've had my new rig running fine for about 3 months. all of a sudden last night while playing COD4 the game freezes and little red pixelated "V" looking things show up everywhere. so i reboot. open the game again, it happens again like 20s in. so i shut down, let the comp cool down thinking maybe my gpu was overheated. come back 20 mins later, start up, try to start WoW, same thing.

I opened up my tower reseeded the RAM the GPU, cleaned the fans and such.

Now when i start up, while still in DOS there's these thick red pixelated lines running vertically through the screen. Once it reaches the windows loading screen (with the logo and the loading bar) there's green pixels everywhere.
and now the comp wont even start into windows.

I'm going to try throwing my old GPU to make sure that is the problem.. but if it is, whats wrong with my EVGA Geforce 8800GTX?

EDIT: ok i threw back in my old X1900 XT started up, no more pixelation problems but as soon as its past the windows loading screen it goes black with the white cursor. im thinking this may be something to do with running an ATI card with the NVIDIA drivers or something. lol. So nothing works right now at the moment.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[MinusII]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v721/MinusII/DSC_0580.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v721/MinusII/DSC_0580.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v721/MinusII/DSC_0581.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v721/MinusII/DSC_0581.jpg


after that it just sits at a black screen. waited about 10 mins still nothing, so i shut down. also tried safe mode, no luck.

[mjc]

Oh yeah, that GTX is toast...see if you can get into Safe Mode and uninstall the Nvidia drivers. That should allow you to drop the ATI card in, then look at the warranty on the 8800...

[MinusII]

cant start up at all with the nvidia card in.... so now what do i do?

[saphalline]

More tests are needed.

Have you tried memtest on it, yet? To see if the main system RAM is good?

Also, can you boot into a Linux live CD with the NVidia card? Like Ubuntu or Knoppix or your fav flav?

As a last resort, do you have a spare hard drive laying around that you can use for testing? If so, try disconnecting all your current HDD's, put in the spare, and try installing a fresh copy of Windows using the NVidia card.

[MinusII]

dont have any idea what memtest is, i dont have a linux live CD, and no spare HD.

[MinusII]

well ran the memory test with the windows CD, no problems. still cant get into windows though >.>

[MinusII]

ok threw my old card in and did a system restore to 3 days ago, and now it starts up O_o... so im gonna try my geforce again to make sure it wasnt something else.

[MinusII]

nope. apparently the nvidia card is gone.

[mjc]

If you have access to a machine with a CD/DVD burner memtest (which is much better than the memory 'tester' that is included on the Windows disk) and a Linux LiveCD are withing easy reach...in fact, Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.com/) has memtest on the CD, as a boot option. (click the download link, scroll down to find a nearby mirror and download)

You will be downloading an image file, so you need to 'burn image' and not just burn a data CD. This will be a bootable disk and there are several boot options, one of which is memtest.