An odd problem

[WaterSnake]

So, I play WoW. This problem started about a week ago. I was playing...dadada...the regular, when suddenly WoW froze. Odd, WoW is a sturdy program, it usually never fails. So, I try and alt tab out, and I actually can, which is odd. So, I come to my desktop, and (SHOCKING) it looks like someone set my screen res from about 1200x1080 to 800x600, and my Color quality from 32bit down to 4bit. I freak out, restart, and my desktop is fine. Then, the same thing happens again the next day, and the next day, and the next, and finally, it happened today, and I decided to check things out. I pull up the Display window, and check my settings tab. I was right, my resolution is at 800x600, and my color quality is at 4. The very odd thing is I can't change them back, they're the only options available. So, I decide that I should reinstall my drivers, so I download my drivers, and when I'm shutting down WoW (don't install drivers with other programs open) my screen flickers and suddenly it's back to normal...kinda...When I open up steam, it still looks really bad and weird and scary, so I shut steam down and bring it back up again, and it's fine too. So odd...


Please help me, I'm paying 15 buck a month for WoW, and I want to play it without having to stop every 5 minutes and deal with this crap.

Note: I did reinstall my drivers, they're the latest up to date.

I have a
Nvidia 8800 GT
2.33 Ghz intel core 2 duo
2GB of ram (or maybe it's 4)

 

[GTS]

I have a feeling that either: 1. There is a driver issue or 2. The video card is failing. These are two issues off the top of my head. Which company made the 8800? (EVGA, Asus..?)

 

[Master Gunns]

2. The video card is failing.

Seems likely, or your PSU is.

Try reseating your video card, while doing that get some compressed air and blow all the dust out of your case.

 

[GTS]

Try reseating your video card, while doing that get some compressed air and blow all the dust out of your case.

^^ I agree with that one. After you try that, maybe try to rollback the driver to the one you know worked last. Before I left on vacation on Sunday, I updated my drivers for my 260gtx which left my system crippled (nothing on the monitor when widows is starting). Rolling back to my drivers worked.

 

[WaterSnake]

^^ I agree with that one. After you try that, maybe try to rollback the driver to the one you know worked last. Before I left on vacation on Sunday, I updated my drivers for my 260gtx which left my system crippled (nothing on the monitor when widows is starting). Rolling back to my drivers worked.

Yeah, I'm about to roll back to the drivers I got off the original disk.

I've already tried reseating it and blowing off dust.

EVGA made my card.

 

[Ratfire]

Even though you already tried the basic solution, it seems like this is a driver problem. From what you described, losing your resolution and quality options in your display settings is something that happens when Windows can't find the correct drivers for your display controller and reverts back to the defaults.

The next time this happens, when you go into display, check what display it lists under the settings tab and then click the advanced button and see if you still have access to nvidia controls. My guess would be you only have access to the four basic controls, of which you can check the adapter tab to see what controller it has reverted to.

If not, you can try to use the nvidia controls to see if they give you more options for changing your display settings back.

Also, there's the off chance you may be having these issues from hard drive / corrupt OS problems. It's sort of a sledgehammer approach, but you might benefit from reinstalling windows if nothing else works.

 

[WaterSnake]

Even though you already tried the basic solution, it seems like this is a driver problem. From what you described, losing your resolution and quality options in your display settings is something that happens when Windows can't find the correct drivers for your display controller and reverts back to the defaults.

The next time this happens, when you go into display, check what display it lists under the settings tab and then click the advanced button and see if you still have access to nvidia controls. My guess would be you only have access to the four basic controls, of which you can check the adapter tab to see what controller it has reverted to.

If not, you can try to use the nvidia controls to see if they give you more options for changing your display settings back.

Also, there's the off chance you may be having these issues from hard drive / corrupt OS problems. It's sort of a sledgehammer approach, but you might benefit from reinstalling windows if nothing else works.

Well, I reverted back to the Driver that my card came with, and things seem ok. But yeah, maybe a fresh install would do me good.

 

[entens]

Does this happen when you go into WotLK areas?

I'd agree with dust. It might be overheating your GPU. I also second the PSU might be failing.