Weird display glitch help needed

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I get weird reddish tints on the pixels, in fact the black appears as red and is pixelized (if there is such a verb).

It happens when I start my computer and when I want to play some games (it happens every time with BG2, after a while and sometimes even before I can load a game). What should be black takes a most distracting and unbecoming reddish hue (can you imagine how the boards look like with all the black and the dark blue turned into some kind of reddish shades between red and pink... It's truly horrible).

I started by checking my display options in the control Panel but I couldn't find anything wrong there. So far the only way I found to solve this (temporarily unfortunately) is to run the driver for my graphic card (starting from there I have serious misgivings about this question).

I suspect a virus (although I have an antivirus running at all times) or an update which would have gone wrong (my problems started after I got an update for Adobe Acrobat Reader which is not fully Vista compatible)... Still these are rather uneducated guesses on my part.

I'm running a laptop with Vista SP1, my graphic card is a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 (with the latest driver 7.15.11.6369 [11/09/2007]).

I tried to take screenshots but these won't show my problem since the faulty pixels only show up because of this weird display thing.

Since I'm not that good with computers I'd appreciate any advice you could give me so I could stop banging my head against the walls (these are not padded so it hurts quite a bit). If the worse comes to pass I'll have to format my drives but I frown on this perspective, so before I resort to such drastic measures feel free to share you knowledge in the dark arts of technomagic. I'm so desperate that I'm willing to consider any option even the most unlikely: "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth..."

 

It might be the drivers for your video card, perhaps you should reinstall them.

From personal experience, I know that Vista has some weird driver management problems. My installation lost its network drivers. Vista knew that the device had drivers, which were installed and worked in the past, but it was not able to get the device properly running again. I solved this by removing the drivers and reinstalling them.

 

It is a good thong to update the graphic drivers anyway. For Nvidia I cannot help. ATI cards for me.

Adobe does have a vista version. Here: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html?promoid=BUIGO

Did you go to a restore point that was made before the adobe update? It is located in the backup and restore centre. I have it under the start button.

 

Thanks for the tips. I reinstalled Windows and it hasn't solved my problem so it must be worse than I thought.
I hate when things don't work.

 

Does your motherboard have an onboard video output port? Maybe you should use that one and see if the problem persists.

 

I agree , plug an other monitor in the vga port and take a look.

It is possible that your warranty lasts two years.

The Nvidia site lets you instaal drivers whit online help I believe.

 

Thanks for the help. I don't have another monitor (except if I plugged it on my old laptop which I'm currently using for the Internet and work and I don't want to mess around with it since it's working). Besides I just don't have the computer skills to do that.

My warranty is over (one year and two weeks, that's how lucky I am).

Anyway thanks a lot. I guess I'll have to take it to the shop and hope they won't charge me too much for the repair. I'm a big laptop fan but when that happens I feel regular computers are much better (you can always fiddle with the cables and see what happens).

EDIT: what would I need to hook my laptop to another monitor or a TV? If all I need is a cable I could give it a try and at least get some use from that piece of junk. I'm so bloody annoyed right now and I don't feel like spending hundreds of euros on a computer that won't be worth a bag of peanuts one year from now.

 

Is the warranty where you live also two years?

 

No, unfortunately it's only one year. I didn't feel like coughing up 300 extra euros to extend the warranty since a computer loses it value ever so quickly.

In any case I guess I'll have to check if I can hook it up on a TV or a monitor. Do I need an adapter or some special cable?

If I can get one on Tuesday maybe I'll be able to find out whether my screen is faulty or whether the problem is even more serious than I thought.

I've come to realize how computer dependent I have become. It has not been a week but it feels like ten years.

 

If your computer *and* the TV have a VGA port, you can connect them that way, otherwise you're probably going to have to use a S-Video cable to connect them...but that is less than ideal.

 

Less than ideal is better than nothing... I bought a cable to connect it to a TV, I'll check this week end if it works (I don't have a TV at my place).
In any case I guess I'll have to take it back to the shop sometime next week. It's a major nuisance.

 

how can you not have a tv? remember i'm a typical american, so theres like 5 tv's in my house. crap, can't count. 6.

 

In some homes, a tv makes less hours than a pc. I own one tv, an old model. I miss part of the picture. My pc is high end-ish. Even my fotocamera costs twice as much.

 

over here it tends to vary based on the age of the household. young teens in the household more money on the computers - older adults in the household more money on the tv(big screen baby!) i get by just fine with my emachine

 

I hate watching TV.

Anyway, my problem had to do with the screen (faulty connection). It cost me a hundred euros but it is fixed now.