Is my graphics card dead?

[tjp85]

Hi folks, I'm wondering if you can help me figure out if my graphics card is the culprit for a problem I'm having.

I started my computer as normal this morning, logged into the windows desktop and then went to make a coffee. On returning my screen was black, and I at first thought it was just the power saving profile turning it off after 10mins of inactivity. However, no keyboard strokes or mouse clicks brought it out this state.

I restarted the machine with the reset button as I obviously couldn't see the screen in order restart it normally. After doing this it presented the POST screen as normal, but my screen went dead black after this. No windows logo followed by the login screen, though I could hear the logon screen music through my speakers.

I again restarted the machine and got the same result after selecting Normal Mode on the screen warning of an unexpected shutdown. I shut down my machine completely, power cycled it and restarted it. I did this twice with the same results.

Suspecting that my graphics card might be at fault I shut it down and turned off all power, then removed my GPU power cables and moved my monitor cable to my motherboards onboard graphics port. So far I have been able to use the machine without problems since.

I'm hoping someone can help me troubleshoot this and figure out what has happened, and if my GPU has gone to silicon heaven.

My hardware specs are as follows:
* Intel Core i5 2500K
* ASUS P8 Z68-V Motherboard
* 8GB DDR3 RAM
* Gainward Phantom NVIDIA GeForce GFX 570
* BenQ E2420HD Monitor (on DVI)
* Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Are you able to boot on the graphics card into safe mode? If you can it's probably driver related, if not, maybe the card is overheating.

 

[Greatham]

I'd agree with Sergeant_Sneaky.
after redoing the drivers (note if the latest drivers dont work, you could try a couple of versions older and see if that makes a difference as i've seen older drivers work where a new driver failed.)

Has anything else changed on your system?
You could also try unplugging the power from the computer, opening up the side and removing the graphics card. carefully clean the dust from the PCI port and the graphics card then plug it back in the same port, if it fails again try another port.