Strange Graphic Artifacts

I am posting in here because I do not know if this problem is software or hardware-related, and since it only affects high-level graphics, they only appear in games.

For about a month in most graphically intensive games, I have been experiencing severe graphical glitches. I cannot for the life of me pinpoint anything. At first I thought it was a fried graphics card, but I have since replaced it and the glitches still persist.

Different things happen in different games:

- Call of Duty: Black Ops creates strange neon colors with no textures to speak of. All text and the cursor is a jumbled mess of color.
Picture: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=1zf4w9h&s=7

- Battlefield Bad Company 2's water is completely gone, and so is the sky. No particle effects happen.

- Serious Sam HD gets an error upon start-up and crashes.

- Switching Runescape to DirectX mode produces a complete green screen, and once loaded, the game becomes unplayable laggy. OpenGL and software mode work perfect on the highest settings.

- Most of these game's black loading screens have turned to green after these artifacts have shown up.​

Most older/less graphically-intensive games have continued to work fine (RollerCoaster Tycoon, Locomotion, Killing Floor, Doom, etc.).

I have replaced my graphics card, as said before, downloaded and installed the most current version of DirectX that works for XP, checked my drivers were most recent (they are), and went through DirectX's test for functionality (computer passed in all areas). I'm completely stumped on what the problem could be. Any and all help would be immensely appreciated.

 

Try a different monitor, just to rule it out.

 

Thanks for the reply. My monitor is an extremely old and huge monitor, and I tried out my brother's tiny LCD screen, no dice. Still experiencing the same artifacts.

Thanks for the reply. It is, but they don't seem to be doing anything. I moved them and that didn't do anything, and when I changed monitors, my brother's monitor was nowhere near anything magnetic, and still produced the same artifacts. Also, the image I linked to only produced after minimizing and maximizing. For some reason it gets incredibly bright.

I have SP 3, DirectX9.0c, and I haven't tried installing any DX10 or DX11.

I'm really starting to think that DirectX is the culprit, as all of these games use directX for their graphics (I only encounter these artifacts from within these four games, but I'm sure anything using DirectX would see them as well), and when switching from OpenGL to DirectX in Runescape I encounter a massive FPS drop. Yet, I've tried re-installing DirectX and that hasn't helped. Could anything within DirectX be screwing with my computer?

 

DirectX really shouldn't be messing with anything, not to that extent...

Which specific video card do you have? You said you replaced it, when you did, did you put it in the same slot as the first one? Move it to another slot, that will tell you if the slot is where the problem is.

 

Thanks for the reply. Right now I have a GeForce GTS 450; it replaced a GeForce 8800 GTS. My motherboard sadly does not have another PCI Express 2.0 connection for this graphics card, so I can't move it to another spot =(.

Are you sure? As all the cases where my graphics are screwing up have been games where the graphics must go through DirectX functions. Most other low-level non-DX applications and games continue to work perfectly fine.

 

PCIe is backwards compatible, so you don't need a 2.0 slot just to test and rule things out. Any PCIe slot your card fits in will work just fine for that purpose.

And yes, DirectX should not be messing things up that badly. Unless of course you have a corrupt install or malware that twisted it. But that's why you reinstall DirectX as a part of the troubleshooting.

 

Thanks for the reply. What I meant by specifically saying the slot type required was that there was another slot for a graphics card, but not one that fit my card. I probably shoulda just said that, lol.

I did reinstall DirectX, but I couldn't uninstall it in the first place. I have many different versions of DirectX, both retail and debug, floating around on my computer from when I was learning DirectX programming, so I don't know if and how to uninstall all the extras?

 

Uninstalling DirectX has a bad habit of making Windows unbootable. You can try installing the version that came on the game disk over whatever version is on your PC right now.

 

Thanks for the reply. I've already downloaded and installed the most recent version of DX from microsoft's website, but still no dice. I've been contemplating a complete HD format, and if that doesn't work then it's most definately hardware-related.

 

I would agree. Usually a complete format and reinstall is very far down on the list of things I suggest trying as a part of troubleshooting game issues, but if you are willing to do it, and don't mind the hassle of setting everything up all over again, doing it would once and for all rule out any software as a cause of your issues.

 

Alright then, I'll get back to you as soon as I format my hard drive.

 

After replacing my old hard drive with a new one (significantly more space), all games that once malfunctioned have now started to work again. Whatever the problem was, was software-related.

 

Awesome! :highfive

Congratulations on getting everything sorted.

 

Thanks for all the help.