Windows sucks i know. This is a problem i have never came accross within windows ever. So i decied to ask the bored before i reinstalled windows which is a pain. Every now and then when im working on the computer i will get crazy weird visual defects on the screen. This is a very minor example http://12.210.200.43/test/weird.jpg Sometimes the whole screen becomes purple unless i minimize the window and reopen it to make everything fine again. As you can imagine this becomes very annoying. I dont ussually install anti-virus software becuase i feel its a virus itself, but i did just to check it out, and nothing was found with the most upto date definations. I cleaned out the registery and ran adawre to see if some spyware had gone bonkers. Anyone seen anything like this? or is windows just screwed up as ussual and im going to have to reinstall it. Oh btw before someone makes a suggestion to disable windows skinz, ive done that already and it didt help anything. Thanks in advance.

Install the newest video drivers from the manufacturers website.

accually you know what that might of been why its doing this. it never it done it before hand. But after i installed SP1 it went bonkers like that or so i think. Ill look into that some more

I used to get very similar problems when overclocking my video card. I assume that it was down to heat on the memory chips or something, but putting the memory speed back to normal solved it.

Perhaps it's a heat issue on the card? Have you cleaned all the fans, etc in the machine?

Paul

I'd update the drivers and if that didn't work, try another display card. The RAM sounds faulty on the one you have.

"So i decied to ask the bored..."

How do you know we're bored?

Does it exhibit the weird problems in Safe Mode (press F8 when booting & choose Safe Mode)? If not, it's probably a driver related problem. I'd be sure to remove/reinstall you video drivers before plunking down $$ for a new vid card.

-Zeke

Spelling man, spelling.

Also, if it turns out not to be a driver problem, try reseating the card in the PCI/AGP slot. I had loads of weird PC behaviour with my audigy because it had become unseated.

Paul.

I agree with the other assessments in this thread: Either a driver bug, or your video card has some bad RAM or a heat problem.

Or your CPU has a heat problem. First thing I'd try is taking the cover off and feeling the heatsinks. If they're too hot to touch (and leave your finger on) then they're too hot to work properly. Second, I'd replace the video card. Looks a lot like video ram errors. and when you force a refresh, it overwrites those spots again, so the errors go away. The LAST thing I'd do is reinstall windoze.

One thing that is odd, is that doing a screen capture should NOT grab those errors, Hrrrmmmmm.......

I've seen that pink color with incorrect drivers and also with buggy 'Windowblinds' OS skins from Object Desktop, here: http://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/screenshots.html

-Zeke

well its definatly not a heat problem, i have fans galore and just touched it and seems fine, i know its not the windows skins. A bad video card maybe, its a matrox dual display card. Bought an OEM model so that says it there. Im going to reinstall the drivers now. Thanks for the tips.

Whereas I would always do the Windows reinstall first - I reckon it is the easiest way to fix almost all Microsoft cruft issues

Although in this instance I would agree with the other posts above.

im accuakly going to reinstall windows anyways, i do this about every 3 months anyways, windows would be great if it worked the way it did the first day it was installed.

One thing that is odd, is that doing a screen capture should NOT grab those errors, Hrrrmmmmm.......

Oh yes it should. The image of the screen is stored in the graphics card RAM and hence when you do a screen shot on a graphics card with faulty RAM the corruption does indeed show on screen shots.

P.S. When I first saw this happen myself I was very confused, because like you I also assumed that the bitmap for the screen shot came from the machine's RAM rather than from the graphics card. When you think about it though it makes sense, why waste space in main memory storing a copy of what is on screen when the graphics card has RAM dedicated to that purpose.