Garbled Display on Reboot

[Overlordz]

Okay, so if I turn on my computer from a TOTALLY fresh boot, it works fine. Once I restart it, the BIOS Screen, and Windows, have garbled displays. I have to turn off the computer in the back, unplug it, push on the power/reset buttons, etc to get all the juice pumped out and then it will boot and work fine again. So after trying messing around with BIOS settings for awhile, messing around with settings in Windows for awhile, and uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers (attempting to use drivers from my CD, from Windowsupdate, from the NVIDIA site) I'm puzzled. Any ideas on what's wrong? I don't reboot a whole lot, but it's a pain in the ass to have to totally drain the computer of power before it'll boot up properly.

My system specs:
Athlon 650
384MB PC100 RAM
Windows XP (with all critical updates installed)
Geforce4 MX 440 (Chaintech)
Logitech Cordless Mouse
Realtek 10/100 NIC Card
HomeFree PhoneLine 10Mb Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC
(networks our computers via the phone line)
A fairly old Yamaha sound card
30GB Hard drive, 10GB hard drive
Memorex CD-RW and HP DVD-ROM

(Okay I probably went overboard on specs but it can't hurt

 

[qquizz]

First things that come into my head are: Reseat the cable from the monitor to the vid card. Reseat the video card.
Question: how many watts is your power supply? Is this a AGP or PCI video card? Do you have integrated video already in your computer?

 

[xeenrecoil]

heya overlordz:

You can eliminate alot of work by doing these simple steps.

I would recommend you try your card in another computer, if it doesnt have the issue in another computer then its likely not your video card that is the problem.

Then try another video card in the trouble PC, and if it displays fine after ten resets then you know its definately the other card that is the problem and not the slot or the motherboard.

I would at that point, just to make sure, try a different PSU, your 3.3v or 12.0v rail might be fluxuating to the point its causing unstable operation.

If it is none of these things then i would start looking at your Ram or motherboard itself as the problem, start troubleshooting from there.

XeeN

 

[Overlordz]

It's an AGP card. My power supply is 250Watts. Nope, don't have integrated video.

My motherboard is an Epox motherboard, "EP-7KXA"

I'll try what XeeN said to do if I can sufficiently bother one of my friends enough to let me screw around with their computers. Unfortunately I don't have any video cards or other computers around here to test with.