Computer Problems

Hey all. I had a major crash after looking at our offline member list in Rift. My monitor went into power saver mode and my computer was unresponsive. Had to force it to shut down by holding the power button and when I started it back up it wouldn't load windows. After shutting the computer off over night, it started up semi-normal and I was able to reset it to factory settings. I can now run windows, at least, but when I log into Rift, the frame rate drops and it soon freezes.

I've got the newest graphics drivers installed for my card, my copy of windows is up-to-date, and Rift is the only game installed on my computer - and that is a fresh installation -(I plan to try another game after I get some sleep).

I tried a clean boot in vista to see if a start-up program was causing a conflict and it didn't help
I'm at a loss for what else to try. I'm starting to think my graphics card is bricked. Going to see, today, if my friend still has my old graphics card I gave him lying around so I can try that.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit, 3gb RAM, Nvidia 9800 GT GPU, Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz CPU

I want to please ask members to STOP telling other members to load the offline members tab as a joke. As you can see, it is not funny. You are griefing people IRL when you do this. I have seen numerous times someone joines the guild and then inevitably someone tells them to do this. I try to tell them not to before they do it, but some trustingly do it. In 1.4 release this won't be a problem but until then, please stop doing it. Jacko, have you tried the 'repair' rift function on the rift launcher?

I haven't, but since it's a fresh install on a fresh format, I didn't think it would matter. I'll try it anyway. And nobody told me to do it. I decided to do it on my own... it has never crashed me before when I did. I've been getting an error occasionally that says my "display driver has failed, but has recovered" for awhile now, so I'm thinking the problem has been there for awhile now.

Fresh format, fresh install has nothing to do with it. If the computer crashed while the (any) program was running, and the program was writing to the hard disk at the time, what it was running can become corrupt because it did not get to finish. Hope that works for you. You can't "Brick" a video card really without overheating it. Download the 3DMark free version and run it. If it runs fine, your video is fine. (It may be slow unless you have a $300+ video card, that program is VERY graphics intensive.

Sometimes it helps to take the graphics card out and then put it back in again.