Video Card failure

[LMC]

Hello I had a thread going in the Build A PC area as I want to upgrade my MoB and CPU. However a short time ago I was on said PC(presently a 1.0 Ghz Duron) perusing a forum when a message popped up saying a failure in my video card(128 Mb ATI Radeon 9200 SE) and the graphics went to 320x210 or some such. This has happened a couple times in the past few days and a warm reboot fixed it. However this time the machine went thru the boot process to the Win XP screen with the bar at the bottom with the blue 3 element tootsie roll scrolling across(the 'splash screen'?) then aborted. The white on black 'Windows cannot start normally' screen then came up and(after trying 'Start Win normally' a couple times and 'Start from last good configuration' a couple times) I selected Safe Mode. Device Manager showed no red or yellow icons so I went to System Restore and tried restore to the last point, day b4 yesterday. Same result. I guess I'm just looking for confirmation the video card is indeed hors d' combat or some other conclusion or idea to try. I appreciate any input. Thanks

[flanzig1]

The video card being bad is probably correct. Try a couple of things first: check the heatsink area for dust build up and reseat the video card.

[LMC]

Thanx for your response. I had a CPU fry once before so I have been more diligent in keeping heat sinks, etc clean. I removed and replaced the card as you suggested and voila! it worked. When the boot process finished there was a response screen from the restore process. It said a problem had been experienced in the video DRIVER so I went to ATI's site and d/l the Catalyst driver for broadband connections. Hopefully the problem is permanently solved. Again, thanks.