Start up problem

[chrisbram]

Last night the power went out in our house and this morning my computer screen was a bunch of colour (hard to explain but if you think about what your screen looks like when a game crashes sometimes). So I restart the computer and it loads fine , goes through the windows is loading screen and then just crashes to the same stuffed screen. So I started in safe mode and it runs fine, I then did a system restore to an earlier date but it failed to rectify the problem. I also have windows running on 2 other hard drives on the computer so I loaded up one of those and the same problem with that. Also sometimes after the crashing screen the screen goes black and then message "no signal imput Check video cable" comes up and the screen shuts down as if the computer was off. Any ideas on what could be causing this and how to fix it?
I really dont want to reinstall windows and lose everything on there.

Edit: it is windows 7 I am running

[glc]

You have a hardware issue, not a software issue. Your video card is probably failing, but it could be something else.

Full specs, please - brands and models of the components including the power supply.

[chrisbram]

Originally Posted by glc You have a hardware issue, not a software issue. Your video card is probably failing, but it could be something else. Full specs, please - brands and models of the components including the power supply.

Thanks for the reply. My specs are as follows:
Asus striker II Extreme Motherboard
Antec Truepower Quattro 1000w PSU
Gigabyte Geforce GTX280
Q9550 Qaud Core
4GB Corsair DDR3

Is there anyway for me to test the video card while in safe mode?
I downloaded and installed new drivers for the card which made no difference.

[glc]

When my old GeForce overheated and "failed" it still ran in safe mode, but not in normal mode. No real way to test it except by substitution.

I would run diagnostics on the ram.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool