Usually the most common video card issue can be resolved simply by reinstalling the graphic cards driver, or checking on the manufacturer’s website for a new more up to date version of the driver.

If this makes no difference read through the following common issues and resolutions

Computer appears to boot up ok, but you get no image or and out of range error on the screen.

Usually happens when the resolution or refresh rate the computer is using is not supported by the monitor, to rectify this power on the computer and hit the F8 key as it powers on, then you should see a small menu with a number of options, one of them is Safe Mode – choose this and then login to your computer, it will now boot up in a low resolution, right click on the desktop.

Select Properties (XP) or Personalize (Vista) – now choose settings and drag the slider down to lower the resolution – choose something low like 800×600, reboot your computer logging back in as normal – once you have logged in you will be able to increase the resolution settings, common resolutions are 1024×768, 1280×1024 or widescreen formats such as 1440×900.

If your computer is suffering from slow or jumpy video, its worth checking to make sure the problem is actually due to the video card, or even your computer.

By this I mean does your video card issue occur only with online videos? This will probably be down to your internet connection being too slow, or the website on which the video is located is too slow or overloaded, the easiest way to test is to try another video from another website, also try one in a lower resolution as high resolution videos can make very large files. If you find it to still be slow download the video locally and test.

If the problem occurs with videos running from your pc locally then the issue could simply be the graphics card is not powerful enough to run, try running low resolution videos to confirm this as even very low powered graphics cards will be able to run this type of video, so if it cannot even do this then the issue could be the driver, especially so if you have just rebuilt your computer as Windows will install a compatible VGA driver if it does not have the correct driver within the Windows installation, this will offer very limited graphics abilities. Visit the graphic card manufacturer’s website for the correct driver which will hopefully resolve your video card issue.

Generally the key to pinpointing and resolving a pc video card issue is elimination, this applies to both software and hardware problems, and elimination just requires logical thought, for example imagine if you encounter lines on your monitor, and even after rebooting they still persist, then by plugging the monitor into another computer will determine if the problem is with the monitor or pc, then if its found to be the pc trying another graphics card will let us know if the problem is actually with the graphics card.

computer adviser video card issue article