It seems unlikely your video card died and far more likely your video drivers got corrupted and need to be replaced --or-- xorg.conf is screwed up. Had you done a software update prior to the breakage? Quite often the system will attempt to autogenerate a new xorg.conf and make a mess of it. This is exceedingly common, especially if you are using proprietary video drivers. The good news is that it usually will make a backup first.

Try to boot into a cli, and do some investigating before going for a new card. At least test the card first by booting a live cd. If that works you'll know it's a software thing. You can even do repairs from the live cd, such as swap in a known good backup xorg.conf, if you have one.

something like this happened to me when i was on linux mint 6 every 7 days it would freak out and lock up with a garbled screen similar to the one you displayed i had to stop using mint as a result it also kept saying that the x server wasnt configured properly after a few hours of running even though i never touched the x configuration file ever.

Seems like something is using a too-high-clock mode.

It _could_ be a hardware problem, but it also could be some misconfiguration, like David Smith above said (even moreso these days when xorg.confs are getting to a single-line "#Generated by xyz.org-configurator. Don't edit.")

8-/

I would try a common 1024x768 60Hz modeline (or even 1280x1024 60Hz) just to make sure.

Hooking to another PC would work, even with the same (e.g. pendrive based) system because auto detection would possibly figure things out correctly.

As an aside, I see you're using Kubuntu. Me too, it's great, but:

a) with a pendrive it opens both Nautilus and Dolphin (though I installed XFCE and Gnome) and

b) I've been having Flash performance problems which I don't have in Mandrake (it's old, it's really Mandrake). I switched KDE's sound system off and it got better, with sound! (I'm wondering if esd or that other thing -- pulseaudio -- was active, too... or maybe Flash itself called the OSS drivers)

Same problem with NVidia 8600 GT Card on a Dell Inspiron 1520. Problem is related exclusively to Kubuntu, I think, (using version 8.10 with the lastest drivers), cause the same card work flawlessly in Windows Vista.

Here is a guess based on what I read above.

First, I had something happen to my screen image every now and then where the screen ended up looking like your first image. The culprit was very simple (and you ruled it out I think). The prob was that I don't bother to tighten the connections and every so often the cable from the PC to the lcd would loosen at the lcd end. Push the connector back in and problem is solved for at least some weeks/months.

OK, perhaps what is happening is that your monitor is getting old and losing its range of frequencies it can handle. Xorg is likely configured automatically (or maybe not) by your Ubuntu setup towards the high range of whatever your monitor can handle. Switching distros might solve the problem if the other distro uses a lower setting. If any of this makes sense, then maybe you can hand adjust the xorg file on your ubuntu, the idea being perhaps to narrow (or lower) the range of acceptable frequencies.

Sounds like a Tweet to me, but then again it exceeds 140 characters. And, you would have been spammed to death by now. LOL!

Thanks for sharing your day!

To all those saying it's probably the driver, read the whole article again;
"There is an easy way to tell if it's the card or the driver: if your boot screen is garbled it's the card, because no drivers are loaded yet."

Of course it might be a loose cable as well but if you swapped between analog and digital, tried the screen on a different computer and then moved it back you'll have unpluged and reconnected everything at least once by then. Pretty unlikely that it's just a loose plug after you've done all that.

The other thing worth checking is if the AGP card has lifted out of it's socket just a bit, but usually when that happens the video goes totally dead and you hear beep codes.

NVidia cards have been having problems since the 8xxx series due to some faulty chip packaging. When the temperature of the chip cycles low to high to low too often, the packaging fails and the chip is toast. I'm on my third graphics chip on my current laptop because Dell just keeps swapping it for the same doomed part. All my coworkers have had problems, too. Some OEMs using NVidia chips released firmware/bios updates that turn the fans on more aggressively to keep the temperature more steady, but this will probably make your card last just long enough to be off warranty. Take a look here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GPU-failure,6248.html.

Richard's link is broken with the final period. This one should work:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GPU-failure,6248.html

Referring to your 'ghosts and beasties', I myself have one in my HP Pavilion Laptop. Once in a blue moon, something in the laptop emits a high sqealing akin to a dialup handshake for literally a second. Which is odd, because I have no dialup modem in that laptop, and no need for the system speakers to be beeping OR squaking at me because I have the proper drivers installed. Now, it did this when I had Windows on it originally, so it must be some sort of hardware related thing. Nothing is actually going wrong with the system when it happens, and nothing reports an error.

About that loud POP sound --- that's a classical example of bad capacitors
exploding. I've experienced it quite a few times. Fried motherboard or video card ensues within weeks or even days when voltages are not regulated enough any more. In some cases replacing the caps soon fixes the problem. See www.badcaps.net for more explanations.

Thanks everyone, and yes, a good fast test would have been to pop in a live CD. It is also good advice to think about any recent changes. I'm writing a more organized followup for Linuxplanet.com, complete with a photo of exploded capacitors on the video card.

What I don't ever do anymore is check if something works in Windows. Ew. Linux live CDs and the herds of useful Linux commands (dmesg, lsusb, lspci, iwconfig, ifconfig, reading /proc, etc.) are more than up to the job. Matter of fact the best troubleshooting and fixit tools for windows are Linux live CDs.

If you have any crt monitors left running, the crack noise may be an arc in the ultor (anode) high voltage supply on the big tube. Occasional arcs are not serious, it means the hv regulation is not good. Just wait for it to fail, and replace with a cheap LCD monitor. High voltage in those is the cold cathode backlight. Much lower voltage.

Are you sure the POP noise is not coming from the UPS? I have two APC UPSes, and some time during the night they both do a self-test of the battery. This involves a loud pop/click a second or so of quiet buzzing followed by a soft pop/click.

If you have a 8 series card it is most likely a known manufacturing fault of Nvidia's (xref http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/01/why-nvidia-chips-defective ). Charlie Demerjian has a large number of articles about the whole thing; who knows after the final bill is in it may wind up costing Nvidia dearly (some have even speculated that it might even kill Nvidia, who knows...

Matt

I saw your headline on LXer this morning and opened it with 3 other interesting articles in background tabs to read as I had time. Then I proceeded to spend the rest of my day fixing things that broke overnight or during the day around the office network (even replaced a fax machine and rebuilt a server from scratch after a hard drive failure). At the end of the day the article was still sitting there, waiting to be read. I think your experience was infectious!

FraggedLocust:

This can be some RFI from your cellphone. It happens when your cellphone receives a message while not too far from your computer. It also happens when you switch on or off your cellphone.

Carla:

The badcaps site is interesting. Thanks for all the good writing you do and good luck to you!

Marc.