Video Card Problems!?!

[Craka_J]

Hey guys, my video card (Nvidia GTX 260) has been doing fine for about a year until now. I'm not sure what the problem is. A few days ago, I was able to run games such as Left 4 Dead just fine, but it lagged a bit. I accidentally downloaded and installed 290 (I thought that the patch for 290 would be better than 260 since 290 sounded more up to date) since my frame-rate was a bit slow but then realized it wasn't improving. A couple days later I downloaded and installed the latest patch for 260. To be honest, I've experienced no changes at all even since then. It may not be the patch though. Could it perhaps be a virus? Here's a screenshot to show what I see when I get to the Half-Life2 Main Menu screen:

 

[Kwah]

Try vacuuming or dusting it up. Shouldn't be the problem, but never hurts.

 

[Gilles]

Is left for dead the only game that lags?

It could help a lot Hawk, but it can also hurt if you are an idiot, and damage parts.

 

[Craka_J]

I'll try it. The thing is super dusty actually. Will let you know if anything improves. Also going to run a defrag and scan disk as well to help it out a bit since it's been a while for that too.

 

[Eleandor]

Uninstall your videocard drivers, clean the associated registry keys and install the correct drivers. Installing a 290 patch isn't a good idea if you don't have a 290 card.
Also consider downloading 3rd party drivers, those might actually solve your problem.

 

[Craka_J]

How do I uninstall video card drivers?

Also, cleaned out my PC, ran a disk defagmenter and also a scan disk. Same problems. Only improvements were in how fast things process and start up.

 

[Ghan_04]

The GTX 295 and GTX 260 patch are exactly the same. Nvidia uses one big patch for all their cards, generally. Possible variants on the OS you're running.

 

[Eleandor]

ATI has an uninstaller, perhaps nvidia as well?

 

[Gilles]

Control Panel - System Properties - Hardware (tab at the top) - Device Manager - Display Adapters - then whatever driver you have should be here. Go to action, uninstall.

 

[Craka_J]

Fixed it! Thanks a lot you guys. Plus reputation for each of you.

 

[Infinitynexus]

I have seen similar things.. Right before my VRAM exploded.

 

[Craka_J]

Any idea what the cause was?

 

[Eleandor]

Had a similar problem with my ATI card once in a mod called "Beyond the red line". Apparently there was an opengl bug in the ATI drivers, the omega drivers fixed it.