so I woke up today and...

[Aerothas]

Merry Christmas... my fucking computer is broken.

When my screen saver activated I saw lines of green and black all over my screen. Apparently my video card isn't compatible with Direct3D anymore. The lines went away after a while after disabling the screen saver.

Any ideas? Nothing was changed between yesterday and this morning (no restarts/shutdowns, etc). The computer didn't fall down or anything like that.

Some weirdness:

[Beelzebubs]

There have been some reported issues with the catalyst driver recently.

[Aerothas]

ok.. restarted the computer for the 3rd time and everything seems to be working fine. what the hell. I didn't even do anything

[vegu]

might be that your gfx card's cooler is starting to fail causing it to overheat and give you trouble like that. Get GPUZ and check your graphic card's temperature if it happens again (can also open up your pc and check if the fan is moving i guess)

[Aerothas]

well its happened again. I'm gonna go get drunk and continue to hate Christmas. I don't like opening up laptops. Maybe I'll just get drunk enough to do it and not care if I break anything.

[Aerothas]

I can't open it up. It has screws I'm unfamiliar with. So now I get to use a shitty netbook while I figure out what to do. GPUZ didn't show me GPU temps or fan speeds or anything. I'm guessing the card is fried cause I've read some things about how the nVidia 8xxxM series craps out after 18 months or so. The thing happens to be exactly that age.

[Andaas]

Try Real Temp (http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp); that should give you both your CPU and GPU temperatures. (At least it gives a temp for my GeForce card).

[Berae]

There have been some reported issues with the catalyst driver recently.
Catalyst is such shit, I have an older card and am forced to reinstall the same legacy drivers once every month or so, otherwise I can't boot into Windows on random occasions, have to safe mode uninstall the drivers >,<

[Aerothas]

Try Real Temp (http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp); that should give you both your CPU and GPU temperatures. (At least it gives a temp for my GeForce card).

Real Temp showed CPU temperatures (140F/60C idle) but no readings from the GPU. Regardless, I don't think it's a heat problem anymore. Starting up the computer after being off for about 12 hours presents the same problems. My guess is the card is just fucked. I can still boot up and everything works fine (aside from incredibly distorted video). I'm just gonna back up everything and call Sony even though I doubt I have any sort of warranty.

My favorite part about this whole thing: I've had a laptop cooler underneath the thing since I bought it. Yeah, I know dust and shit can get in there but still... I even cleaned it out with compressed air occasionally. From the posts I've read it's not just me (error 43, along with lines and psychedelic patterns across the screen).

Thanks for your help and suggestions. :)

[Lonskils]

It's simple really. Don't buy a lap top as your main computer!!

[Aerothas]

It's simple really. Don't buy a lap top as your main computer!!

I can't sit in my wheel chair at my desk with my regular PC for more than an hour without my back hurting like hell. So I have to use a laptop or figure a way to use my regular computer without being in pain. :)

[Kikiyo]

Catalyst is horrible and never use it. Just use whatever the one that Windows Update install. Had the same problem when I reformatted my old comp for my brother this week. Catalyst + dusty video card = tons of artifacts. Once it was cleaned and I got rid of Catalyst and installed the one Windows Update said to install, everything went just fine.