RIP Graphics Card?

[Pulse]

This is so bemusing.

I was using my PC fine Friday night and went away for the weekend. Cue me returning last night only to discover my graphics card seems to have mysteriously died; whenever I have the monitor plugged into the VGA port of the card I receive absolutely no signal whatsoever. I'm currently plugged into the onboard card with an incredibly horrendous resolution as it doesn't support 1920x1080.

I checked the cables, I checked the card itself and everything is absolutely unchanged physically, so I'm leaning towards the problem being a software/driver issue. The only thing I can think of is I do remember Windows installing several updates before I left on Friday... so maybe something has gone awry with the latest update or something?

I'm using a Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT (old as hell I know and I was going to upgrade in a few weeks but I'm trying to watch my expenses at the moment) on Windows XP SP3.

I also get this popping up every time I boot up:

..leading me to believe the PC is recognizing the card, yet whenever I try to roll back the drivers or install the original drivers from a CD it fails every time.

Any ideas my beloved Helplife2.net? I'm moderately mad.

 

[Dinnesch]

I think it's very, very unlikely that this means your video card is broken(especially if it outputs a normal image)
Try Driver Sweeper and get the newest drivers from Nvidia.

 

[Stigmata]

Uninstall the drivers, shut down, remove the card, boot (possibly in safe mode), make sure the drivers are gone, shut down, reinstall the card, boot, install drivers. That's the only course of action I can think of right now.

 

[Pulse]

Just tried that whole process to no avail...

I also just had this pop up:

Which I don't understand as Direct X is apparently installed and up to date. Is it worth cleaning that out and reinstalling it?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Try a different slot on your motherboard? Try a different PCI-E power cable to your PSU for the card (if it has it's own power)? Just trying to establish if it is the card or something else.

Also does the fan still run on the card and what temperatures did / does it give you?

 

[Dinnesch]

Just tried that whole process to no avail...

I also just had this pop up:

Which I don't understand as Direct X is apparently installed and up to date. Is it worth cleaning that out and reinstalling it?

That's a very normal response if you have no working drivers installed. Stop blaming the hardware unless you see artifacts/your PC doesn't work at all, seriously.
Did you try what I suggested in my previous post?

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't read the first post correctly. Apologies for my complaints while I was the one not reading carefully.

 

[Pulse]

Try a different slot on your motherboard? Try a different PCI-E power cable to your PSU for the card (if it has it's own power)? Just trying to establish if it is the card or something else.

Also does the fan still run on the card and what temperatures did / does it give you?

The card fan works fine and it has normal temperatures when I last checked it in BIOS. From a physical perspective there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, so I'm convinced its drivers playing up but I just can't pinpoint what has gone awry.

That's a very normal response if you have no working drivers installed. Stop blaming the hardware unless you see artifacts/your PC doesn't work at all, seriously.
Did you try what I suggested in my previous post?

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't read the first post correctly. Apologies for my complaints while I was the one not reading carefully.

I used the exact program you suggested, wiped all the drivers, booted into safe mode to make sure they were completely gone, took the card out, reinserted but still nothing. I've tried system restoring to countless previous checkpoints and its the same story.

 

[Pulse]

Another interesting development; when I go to shut the PC down it just sits on the 'Windows is shutting down..' screen and refuses to turn off unless I manually do it myself. I should just completely reformat shouldn't I?