Did Quake 4 kill my Windows graphics driver?

I haven't had much time to troubleshoot this problem with a bunch of other obligations eating up the hours in my day, but maybe somebody has a quick answer that will save me the time.

I was unwinding with some Quake 4 last night, medium settings, native rez on my dv4000, when the graphics just went nuts. it looked like the screen was overlaid with a checkerboard.

No problem, I thought, it's just a glitch with Quake 4 and it's bedtime anyway. I shut down the game, shut down the computer, and toddled off.

This morning, I couldn't boot fully into Windows. During the Windows XP splash screen, there are vertical rows of dots across the splash (kinda like The Matrix), and those dots are across my desktop when everything chugs to a halt. About half my desktop icons show up, the taskbar doesn't load any icons, and then the screen goes black.

I can boot to Safe Mode no problem, in fact that's what I'm using now.

Any ideas?

 

Sounds like your video card might have overheated...or the memory on the card spazzed out.

 

You say exactly what I feared the most, Air Force Dude....

 

You can try and boot up in safe mode and try re-installing the drivers that might reset the cards bios...so that way you can see if it is permanent.

Sorry bro

 

Well, poo. The driver installer doesn't even recognize the card, so it seems like it has to be fried. Sending 'er off to the HP service center on Monday.

Crumbs.

 

Yeah, sorry to hear that. But at least you get it repaired for free

 

Yeah, if the drivers didn't fix it, then its the card. I'm thinking the video memory is the problem.

HP is great with the warranty service. I had to send in my HP once for a problem that I caused (failed BIOS update) - they overnighted it there, fixed it the next day, and overnighted it back. I had it back in three days.