My linux box's graphics card must be going... the thing will randomly reboot (even during boot-up) and the picture on the monitor is all screwed up... Sometimes the picture will be perfectly normal too... is it overheating or going bad?

Thanks!

[N]F

sounds like over heating to me. I know I've had lots of issues that follow that pattern, often its fine but then the image goes funky and then goes blank or reboots. Try running it with the case open/off and see if that helps or get some temp monitoring stuff.

Ok... it has an onboard fan (which I can't remove) so I'll try to clean it and see if it actually turns... there's no easy way to get it off of the card itself.

Ok, I seem to have got it working (case off) and now it is giving me "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"....

sometimes I wonder why I ever am persuing the career of computer tech...

[N]F

You sure you didn't knock anything out when you removed the case?
I'd check if everything is in properly, jumpers are set correctly etc..

If it still happens i reckon probably the hard drive is gone or the ide/sata connectors on the motherboard are faulty.

Again, go through all the connections to make sure. That is the most likely problem

-HellFire

I remember the time when my graphics card when I was playing a graphics intensive game. The area where my graphics card would be would be really hot and it will automatically shut down my laptop. Like it was a emergency shut down. What I did to remedy the problem was I blew the dust build up out of the graphics fan with a air can. And it somewhat helped the problem. But I eventually had to replace it because it was out of commision. Rule number 1 of playing graphiclly intesive game with a weak graphics card, make sure you give your computer a good "break time" because over use might damage it.

I have graphics card with passive cooler on it, but the first thing I do, was to install an active cooler fan on it, and plug it on free port on motherboard. So, now I've overclocked it, and it works fine, for almost a 1 year now.

Disk Boot failure could imply the problem lies elsewhere. As mentioned make sure you didn't bump anything out of place when opening it up (make sure the HD's are properly plugged in, to be precise) and made sure everything else is properly plugged in.

nope didn't touch anything... oh well... it isn't going to kill me to re-install the OS.

Ok, well I left the machine on all night and all day with the case off and the card didn't overheat. Now I just have to figure out why... my room has been 80 degrees F. and it was operating smoothly.

[N]F

Ok, I switched all the parts into a better case and it has been running smoothly since. This case allows more air to come in and cool the parts. I'm still confused of why it would overheat... yesterday, my room was 83 degrees and it was operating just fine...

[N]F