Gone to Plaid

Over the past few days my computer has, seemingly randomly, been freezing up and displaying quite a wide array of colored lines and patterns when it feels like it. See the included picture of my Vista welcome screen, which strangely enough looks like an awesome arrangement for bath/shower tiles from further away!

Amusing as these random images are, at first I totally freaked out thinking it was my monitor. However, I quickly realized I was still able to do system restores and navigate my way around the screen whilst squinting through the jaggy lines. So that left my NVIDIA 7600 GT as the most possible culprit, which I’ve never had issues with before. I know they burn out with age and use though, and I’ve had it since I got my desktop over two years ago. So I guess it’s looking to be time for an upgrade. *sigh*

I went ahead and cleaned the case out, cleaned the gold contacts on the card, and uninstalled/reinstalled the card’s drivers. After the second time reinstalling drivers, everything seems to be happy. I’m hoping it doesn’t crap out completely, but if so, I found a pretty good deal on Newegg for a 9500 GT under $70. Kind of makes me wish I waited on spending $70 the other day on a 1TB internal SATA hard drive. . . but that deal was too good to pass up, and I neeeeed space.