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My graphics card seems to die - it produces a lot of horizontal lines of garbage so that it's actually difficult to see what's going on on the screen.

I'm pretty sure it's the graphics card being broken because:

  • the mouse cursor is not affected by the graphics error (so it can't be a problem with the screen)
  • ever since this is happening, the bios bootscreen shows some (different) errors too
  • a 2nd Windows 7 installation on my computer shows exactly the same graphics errors.

The thing is, if I boot in safe mode, everything is fine (only a few areas of particular colors show something that looks a bit like dithering, but that doesn't disturb much).

I assume that's because in safe mode windows 7 renders in software mode or doesn't make use of some hardware shaders or whatever..

I'd like to know what I can do so that I can run my graphics card in normal mode the same way as it is run when booting into safe-mode?

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Is this a desktop or laptop? If it's the former you should be able to set the BIOS to use the motherboards on-board graphics (presuming it has some) as first priority over a graphics card - although you'll then have to change where your screen is connected. –  DMA57361 Nov 9 '11 at 12:58
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2 Answers

If you uninstall the drivers for your video card, then Windows will use standard vesa/vga drivers.

This may be enough to keep the card running with minimal resources, and so not hit whatever is glitching.

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Disable the graphic card in device manager. It disables the drivers, forcing Windows to load the fail-safe VGA/VESA driver

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How does this fix it? –  Simon Sheehan Nov 9 '11 at 20:25
It disables the drivers, forcing Windows to load the fail-safe VGA/VESA driver. –  kinokijuf Nov 11 '11 at 13:41
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