So a friend of mine is in the middle of online courses and it appears his graphics card has had a freakout.
A few weeks ago, it made a horrible noise on bootup, but it went away after a reboot, so he paid it no heed. A little while ago, he left his computer alone for a few minutes only to find that the monitor was claiming "unsupported timing" and that the computer itself had gone silent (it's a Vista machine; the hard drive light is always running non-stop even when not in use). So he turned the machine off manually, turned it back on, and got as far as the "Windows did not shut down properly" message before he noticed the display had a liberal dusting of artifacts.
So he turned it off again, waited about fifteen minutes, then turned it back on. No artifacts this time, even as far as selecting "Start Windows Normally," nor during the bootup sequence. He left it alone again to do its thing, then came back to a nightmarishly glitched BSoD in the middle of executing a memory dump. The computer rebooted afterwards, and he turned it off again when it prompted him to run Startup Repair (the screen was still full of artifacts).
Is there any kind of short-term solution he can use? His homework is due in a couple of days and he can't wait for a graphics card to come in through the mail. Would it be enough to just leave it alone for a few hours and dust it off with some compressed air?
The computer is a Dell XPS from late 2009 and the graphics card, IIRC, is an ATI Radeon 3750 X2.
A few weeks ago, it made a horrible noise on bootup, but it went away after a reboot, so he paid it no heed. A little while ago, he left his computer alone for a few minutes only to find that the monitor was claiming "unsupported timing" and that the computer itself had gone silent (it's a Vista machine; the hard drive light is always running non-stop even when not in use). So he turned the machine off manually, turned it back on, and got as far as the "Windows did not shut down properly" message before he noticed the display had a liberal dusting of artifacts.
So he turned it off again, waited about fifteen minutes, then turned it back on. No artifacts this time, even as far as selecting "Start Windows Normally," nor during the bootup sequence. He left it alone again to do its thing, then came back to a nightmarishly glitched BSoD in the middle of executing a memory dump. The computer rebooted afterwards, and he turned it off again when it prompted him to run Startup Repair (the screen was still full of artifacts).
Is there any kind of short-term solution he can use? His homework is due in a couple of days and he can't wait for a graphics card to come in through the mail. Would it be enough to just leave it alone for a few hours and dust it off with some compressed air?
The computer is a Dell XPS from late 2009 and the graphics card, IIRC, is an ATI Radeon 3750 X2.
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