[Kalina240]

(So I’d like to apologize in advance if this isn’t quite the correct area, I’ll start off sounding off topic just to give background info)
So all the trouble with my laptop started a few months ago when there was an IE scare. I’ve always used IE and must admit I stick with it just because it’s in my comfort zone. During this time my boyfriend convinced me to download Firefox and use it instead, at least till the problems were solved. Immediately after downloading my computer had massive issues.

It would randomly become unresponsive. I wouldn’t call it freezing because the mouse still moved, but nothing the mouse hovered over was highlighted, and all hotkeys stopped working. This occurred about 60 seconds after loading up my user account, or the admin. (I’m on vista.) Through tampering I found out that if I disabled my sidebar and HP advisor I could keep the system relatively normal. I deleted Firefox hoping maybe it just didn’t agree with vista, but still have to disable sidebar and HP advisor upon uploading.

About a month passes and during this time the computer has a dramatic decrease in performance. Loading pages began taking twice or even three times as long, followed by IE shutting down at random without warning or explanation. (leading me to believe I had a virus so I ran every scan I could, resulting in nothing) with more tinkering (I’m aware my tinkering is likely the cause of the problems) I found that Adobe was causing the problems and uninstalled all traces of it. Shortly after this Norton Antivirus began randomly saying it was out of date, even though I have almost a full year left on it. It refuses to update itself and customer service was more interested in keeping me on the phone for an hour than helping.
I let this go thinking I would be fine for a little while. Here is where it gets relevant to this forum, when I turned my computer on three days ago, everything was fuzzy and has distorted colors. The colors are consistent, everything that is supposed to be white is teal, and everything red has the same black pixel blotches on it. I changed my graphics settings hoping to affect it but it still has the same look. My father believes I over heated the Video card and the fix will simply be to get a new one.

I’ll admit I know little past what is required to operate a computer, so I have three questions I’d be grateful if you answered.
1) How can I tell if my video card really is just damaged?
2) If it is not the card, what are some other possible causes that could be the culprit, and where can I go to cure them?
3) And last, what would you recommend to be a not terrible graphics card I could buy? (otherwise I’m going to judge by looking at all prices and picking a middle one)
Additional details: I loaded up a few games to see how they ran once we thought it was my vid card, and besides giving me a headache with trippy colors and random red pixels, they ran without lag or other problem.

Thank you Kindly for your time,
Kalina

[Albert Lionheart]

HI
there may be more than 1 thing wrong here - please tell us:
1) is the clock still telling the right time and date? (That is if you can see it!)
2) If you boot the laptop into safe mode what happens to the display? To boot into safe mode, start tapping the F8 key as soon as the machine has started and select Safe Mode when the menu appears.

[Blackmirror]

Hello and Welcome
If you can boot up into safe mode i would try the steps here please


Malware Removal Guide - Read Before Posting

[Kalina240]

When I put it into safe mode, aside from everything growing larger as is inherent of safe mode, it did the same pixelated thing.

Let me try to discribe it clearly:
The backgrounds of Internet pages, Word documents, and the area I'm typing in right now are teal. Words on the headers of programs appear white still though.
The mouse is a white arrow, but small red dots cling to it.
Most things that are not changed from thier correct colors have these red pixels surrounding them.
I can see things for the most part, Youtube vids play ok (but with those red dots galore). Real video has them less, while generated items like a video of a game have much more.

The clock is displaying fine, and is correct.

(a new thing happened this morning though, Windows security alerts starting screamining that the firewall was down, and that made me have multiple security risks. Despite this, not even the administrator can turn the wall on, it says that it is turning it on, but it remains off and the alert still goes on. I've been using the Norton firewall, which although it is randomly decided it is outdated, it is still on)

Oh and prior to finding this section or reading the "its not always malware" post, I tried to run those steps, I had issues with the CCleaner.
I saved it to my desktop, but when I click on it, it wants to download, so I let it, and select english as my language... And then when I click it, it wants to download...

Hmm it said my post in responce to Albert had to be approved but it let me just post that one right away. Just wait till the other is approved, i promise I didn't ignore =)

[Albert Lionheart]

I think this is a hardware failure at worst, if you are lucky it might be a driver.
Go back into safe mode and to the device manager page (Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager; find the Display Adapters, right click and select uninstall. Reboot and if it looks OK but a bit grainy it needs the driver reinstalling. It might offer to do this for you, in which case find the install CD for the laptop and let it have a chew on that to see if it can find the driver for itself.
If your colours are all screwed up still, the graphics chip could need reflowing which is a specialist job needing special kit.

[Kalina240]

Alright I'll try this when I get in from work tonight. Thank you very much, I'll let you know what happens

[Daveskater]

I'll admit I've only read the post after Donna's (far too sleepy for the first one right now ) but they're similar symptoms to what I had when my graphics card died. Try Albet's suggestions anyway and see if it helps.