http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/index.html

I don't know why people come on here and post, totally unrelated problems. ... Um my refrigerator is not working what should I do? Get the h off of here is what you should do.

My situation is:
I have a laptop HP pavilion dv9000 (dv9821eo) for almost 15 months and just yesterday I suddenly realized the gray horizontal lines appeard across my monitor when I started my computer, and also when i watch youtube.
I guess it is the fault of my nVidia GeForce 8400M GS.

The weird thing is when i move my laptop monitor to 90 degrees angle it gones. I can't find answer for that????

Has anyone else encountered this same thing and what fixed it?

First off, it's sad that so many people throughout the life of this thread are so rabidly anti-nVidia. Like it's nVidia's fault that your prefab Dell, HP or Compaq with cheapo components has become a toaster oven. Pre-assembled computers often use many cheap parts, combine that with a trendy micro-tower case that takes up very little room but has no airflow, and boom. PCB Flambe'.

Many of those TNT2's and such had minimal built-in cooling, just enough to get by. The ones with fans could easily succumb to buildup of dust that would cause them to fail, and then the card would overheat. In a cramped, badly-ventilated micro case, it would have been hard pressed to shed heat to begin with, but fan failure means guaranteed card failure.

I've seen this gray-line problem typically with Intel onboard video chipsets, but any low-power video device can succumb to it, especially if it's 2+ years old and constantly subjected to a combination of dust buildup and excessive heat. It may seem intimidating and/or a hassle to open up your case to clean out the dust and tidy up the wires, or adding fans to make sure you have good airflow, but remember...the price of negligence is a new computer. If you really can't afford to replace major parts or even the entire computer on a routine basis, learn how to take good care of what you have.

Card has no fan and Computer was a 5 year old Carrera (but kept in a cool place in an air conditioned office.

For anyone else looking, I have looked at a number of other forums and as of yet, the solution appears to be to get a new card/repair doesn't seem possible.

i bought top-of-the-line dell one year ago with Nvidia card, and about 3 months ago got the lines. i have avoided taking action until now because i thought it started first while i was running maya, then popped up in after effects, until finally its always on my cursor.

This happened on my machine today - a Chaintech Desperado AGP-R160 NVidia Riva TNT2 M64, which I must admit has worked ok for about 6 years, finally got the "grey lines" ...

As to the comments about fans etc. and overheating -- this card has NO fan. There is a small heatsink on the chip, on the lower surface of the board (great for convection!), and that heatsink is just-bearable-hot. No significant airflow back there though. Really poor -- if it needs cooling then slap a fan on.

Well, I was thinking of buying a new PC. Guess I'll place the order tonight.

The lines are showed even while computer is restarting!

I have a problem with 16MB Aladdin TNT2 cards. Don't anyone call me an idiot for using old hardware, this stuff works fine with the right software. It's not a heating problem. I have a computer lab with 10 machines with all similar hardware. When Nvidia came out with their "FORCEWARE" drivers and then pushed them out through Windows Updates my entire lab crashed! FORCEWARE does something to compress the data stream to make things faster, but in some cases actually makes things grind to a halt. I get green or blue horizontal bars on the screen and then the system is frozen. The problem is that there is too many different kinds of hardware to be handled with a single one-size-fits all driver update, I think.

If you go to downloads.guru3d.com/detonator there is a list of perhaps a hundred video drivers for Nvidia that have released over the years. The trick now is finding the one that works.

Anyone else on this same problem?

I spent a lot of time googling for this problem and found nothing so being financially unable to replace my monitor at the time (I was convinced I was right) I just ignored it. I began to wonder whether it was the card after all when, a few weeks ago, I put my computer into a new gaming case. While dismantling the system I noticed that the GPU fan was burnt out (a brown stain covered the label in the centre) so I attributed this problem to overheating as some of you have done.

I'm going to see if, by replacing the fan the damage can be reversed and perhaps solve another problem I've been having recently with recurring Windows stop errors which I believe are related to my graphics card. Actually one occasional error does in fact blame the display driver for being unable to program the hardware correctly, well, if the hardware is faulty I'm not surprised. A second error which occurs frequently, at least twice daily in fact, is caused by an unknown device driver according to the error report.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem since their card developed these grey lines or did you

Unfortunately, having not seen this site, but having checked to ensure that the monitor was not faulty, purchased another nVidia product (GeForce MX4000).

Installed the card, blank screen. Changed the card to the second PCI slot, same result. Changed the BIOS settings, same result.

Took the card out, and examined carefully, and dismayed to note that the bar code sticker was actually stuck across the gold pins, no wonder the thing could not be recognised. I know I should have seen this when I installed the card, but hell, you don't expect the manufacturer to put a sticker across the pins.

I just bought a 2nd hand Dell box with some flavour of Nvidia TNT in it, for my mum to do wordprocessing on. Initially thought it had a ghosting problem like some others below did (poor quality monitor cables or badly seated cables can cause this). Of course it has the same grey lines and washed out colours everyone describes, on a monitor that I know is OK (via a 4 way KVM switchbox, yeah I know I have too many computers)... I'll find and fit another graphics card from my spares box.

To me this smells very similar to the problem with Fujitsu MPG**** hard drives, where a dodgy chip caused huge failure rates. Fujitsu initially denyed it, but eventually bowed to pressure and admitted the fault. No such admittance from Nvidia...

Many, many thanks to all those who have contributed to this thread - moderators please don't take it down as it's the only answer to this problem that Google finds!

I have a very old AMD Athlon machine ('99) with an Nvidia GeForce 256 GPU in there. A few months back, while on the Net horizontal ghosting appeared all-of-a-sudden. It continues across the screen on all dark obects on-screen. Reinstall drivers - nothing.

So many people with the same problem. Same lines. Same Nvidia chipset.
It sure will put me off Nvidea next time round.

^^^^ Here's a person that's never heard of electromigration.

No, you don't drive your car until it breaks down because some countries force you to get a warrant of fitness where they test your car and can refuse you to take it on the road until you replace this this and this.

Ventilating the case? What a novel idea. For any PC bought off the shelf, ventilating the case is taken care of. If you've built your own PC, well you are at the mercy of your chosen case I'm afraid, but common sense like you suggest is needed.

For the record, current self-built PC is into it's 3rd year of use. Never ever bought any compressed air, and it's still going. So you wasted your money I'm afraid. Now don't get me wrong, I do open the case up occasionally and suck everything out with a vaccum cleaner, does not get as much out as compressed air would, but on the other hand it is free and it works.

I find it amusing you recommend buying a BFG card because you say it will never be replaced due to the lifetime warranty. Well first off I would say that lifetime does not refer to your lifetime, lifetime refers to the life of the product which should be clearly defined in the warranty. For example, ipod's come with a warranty for the lifetime of the product, which is defined as being 1 year in the warranty (obscure reference, but relevant).

Also, a BFG is a card for those that crave the best performance, yet you say anyone is stupid if they have to have the newest parts. Well for the kind of person that buy's a BFG the performance of the product will only be satisfactory for about 12 months. So even though you are spending money on compressed air, and you think you have a lifetime warranty, you will in fact be buying a new videocard in 12 months to replace your current BFG which will be in perfect working order.

You spelt maintenance wrong. You did not capitalise "your" in your first paragraph, if that's your idea of a paragraph. Technology does not change weekly in the industry. I bought a Pentium IV 2.4Ghz 2-3 years ago and there certainly have not been weekly releases of new Pentium chips during that time. The same goes for Videocards, Hard Drives and Ram. Soundcards for that matter too.

I don't know how to clean out my computer? And, I can not afford to buy a new computer. I was trying to find the most inexpensive way to buy a laptop by Spring and I have no idea how to get a decent computer for the said $300. I need to have a home computer, because I have Comcast Cable and phone service through Vonage(through my cable system).

Also, idea of getting everything from my old computer onto my new one seems a bit intimidating to me, although that might be sheer cowardess that could be overcome.

Nvidia GeForce 256 on a 4-year old Gateway, gray lines popped up out of nowhere. Assumed monitor going bad, bought new monitor, same gray lines [hangs head in shame].

I installed updated drivers from the manufacturer of the computer. No fix! then I installed six different drivers from driverguide and still no fix. Which then led me to believe maybe the video card was burning up. Man, it was hot in that office too.

Second, I know you love Mr Whiskers and all, but if you're going to let him sit on the computer, you're going to have to open it up and blow the hair and dust out of there once in a while. The crap I've seen gumming up some people's machines is shameful. Without some air circulation, heat will build up, and heat is a death sentence for electronics. Most of the problems here are with 3-4-5 year old cards, and I'll bet the PCs they are in are choked with dust.

Finally, electronic devices physically only last so long. Have you seen a 15 year old television that still looks as sharp as the first day it was plugged in? Transistor degradation, electrolyte drying in capacitors, physical strain.. eventually these incredibly complex systems are going to drift out of whack with eachother, and something's not going to work right. Maybe on a TNT2, you get grey lines. Maybe on an ATI it just stops working altogether! Heat accelerates the process. There's a reason you never see ten year warrantys on electronics.

It's an on-board nVidia TNT2, the mo-bo being Gigabyte GA 7ZMMP. This mo-bo is speific to Time Computers.

I have now successfully installed a PCI 64MB Radeon7000 as there is no AGP slot.
The card was £21.95 plus delivery and VAT from Misco Direct in Manchester.

It took a bit to figure out how to disable the on-board nVidia chip, but it done by finding "VGA Boot from" in the BIOS and setting it to "VGA". It would appear the default is "AGP" despite there being no AGP slot.

Windows detected the card immediately, the drivers were installed from the CD-ROM and after a couple of re-boots to detaect the monitor, all is well.

The new vid card has also released 8Mb (or was it 16Mb?) of system RAM too.

lesson to be taught:Its nvidia's tecnology and nvidia design engineers mistake prolly its a cheat with the customer who are paying through their nose on the sake of manufacturer's reputation. and suppose some doctor is using machine for life saving effort and the screen goes grey, blurred out of nowhere...

The most worst part of it is nvidia prolly knows this problem from mid 2002 year and they have done nothing not even a single apology to customers who have gone through hardship and costs on new monitor..

Amazed at the number of replies to this i decided to share my experience with you.....may help solve the problem.

This thread definitely helped me.
Thanks.

-guess ATI or something non nVidia...

I have since replaced that card with a GigiByte R-70 (ATI based card)
and the gray line problem is now history!

I was minding my business (as we all were I'm sure) and suddenly
my Dell monitor (trinitron tube based) got dim, and these gray lines
appeared. Like many, I assumed it was the monitor, afterall it's about
6 years old. So I swapped the Dell out for a ViewSonic A-70 that was
only used sparingly from my other system, and I'll be damned, the same problem was there.

By now common sense is telling me it must be my graphic card. Which
is why I almost laughed out loud! My card is a 32 MB Diamond Viper
nVidia RIVA TNT2 (AGP 4X) Imagine my surprise upon finding out that
most of these folks having this problem are also using nVidia based
cards!

Can I assume that most of you guys that replaced your cards are
out of the woods and back to happy computing bliss? And is this
problem indeed more common with nVidia based cards that say
ATI based ones?

(Great forum, BTW!)

BTW, the guy at CompUSA tried to tell me that I needed a video card that retailed for $399.00. I was stunned. I thought, "No way. I could buy a better computer for less than twice that amount." After I deliberated awhile, I asked a bystander whether he thought I needed such a card. He said, "Not if you're not playing really high-tech video games" and he pointed me to a $50.00 video card that he said was no-frills but would get the job done.

Looking at this info, it seems the problem is mostly limited to GeForce 256.
Also, the problem feels familar. It could be the card becomes un-seated. It happens. Espeically after 3+ years. I've had more problems than I can count with visual issues, and stuff, but it's always something I caused, and nothing I couldnt fix.

Moral of the Story.
Computers are un-reliable.
Cant blame ATi, they werent even around in that time. less chip fabing experience... meaning the cards of theirs your buying today, are like the Nvidia cards your trying to get away from.

I'm an amatuer, no computer genius, so if someone has some tips or corrections to this, PLEASE post them!

- you may have to update your BIOS if you replace your card (this can cause irrepairable damage if done incorrectly. Go to your computer brand's website to check to see if there's a BIOS update). Our computers are an HP Pavilion and a Compaq 5000US with Windows Millenium Edition. Make sure the bios update is for your make and model EXACTLY. Once you "flash" the BIOS, it's done, no system restores or reformats will change it.

The long and short of it was that both cards worked fine and I got rid of some reboot freezes that were occuring.

- if you have several devices in your PCI slots, you may have to relocate them. Your machines have IRQ settings, locations, numbering 1 through possibly 15. Your graphics card should be the only thing on whatever IRQ number is listed. Things may crash if you have multiple things like I had - WINTV card, ethernet adapters, etc. Do some research online into these issues prior to attempting the change.

I ultimately reformatted my HD because I had never done it in the 5 yrs I had the machine - it was due. The things I did above along with the reformat have my machine working better than when it was brand new! NO blue screens or freeze ups in a month now (maybe a record).

Problem is, I BOUGHT ANOTHER nVIDIA card!! Diamond S70 GeForce2 MX400 AGP 64MB, paid $38.50 from newegg.com. Had I known this was a common nVidia problem and not just random I would have surely bought an ATI card instead.

On top of this, this new card (which looks good for now - no gray lines) is much noisier than the old one (that's how I found this page, doing a Google search on "noisy fan nvidia"). This sucker sounds like an airplane ready to take off. Maybe they've beefed up the fan design because of this problem?

nVidia - Learn to pay attention to your problems. This chain goes back to 2002. It is the 18th of April 2004. Publish what you're willing to do for your customers if you dare!!!

Can u help me?

Ive ordered a cheap Trident AGP 4x 3D Force G-32 video card. I just installed it. Ips appears on screen lines, lines and freeze! Ive downloades the "latest" driver from JATON site.
YOU said "Installing the driver was a little tricky but I did..."

CAN YOU or anyone help me?????

Bye
www.clanpana.com

Compaq computer, 3.5 years old, NVIDIA Riva TNT2 64 Pro.

You think they plan this out JUST so it makes the three-year warranty?

I opened up the pc and saw that the video card's fan was jammed, but it had almost no dirt it (the fan is facing down when the card is installed, so not much dirt accumulates). I don't know, maybe all the fan's lubricants dried up after time and at one time it stopped. My computer is on all the time.

I ordered an ati 9200 today. Didn't go with a top of the line video card, because it wouldn't make sense since I don't have a powerful enough cpu to push a high end video card to the limit.

I too have an Nvidia card (Riva TNT2 Model 64). All of a sudden, after about 3.5 years, I got the dreaded gray problem.

Thank you to all of you who contributed to this posting. I almost bought a new monitor and almost even a new computer. Now, I will just buy a new ATI video card. I'm pissed that Gateway played around with me for hours on their technical chat room boards when they must have known right away about this Nvidia card problem.

I have a 21" Dell Ultrascan 1600HS monitor (model 1626HT) that was running great until today. I walked away from my computer and came back to it to notice that the monitor screen had darkened somewhat and had strangely colored (gray, orange, and purple) horizontal lines; I could make out the underlying windows and dialog boxes that I had opened on the screen, but there were these very strange horizontal lines discoloring everything.

I've tried unplugging then replugging the monitor, have updated the video card drivers, and have even plugged this monitor up to a different computer (w/ a different video card), but the horizontal lines still appear. If I select the recentering button on the monitor itself, however, occasionally the screen will go back to the correct colors, and then a few seconds later it will revert to those strange horizontal lines.

So the monitor is capable of giving the correct colors, but it won't stay that way!

The system is a P3 733MHz with a NVidia Riva TNT2 Model 64 video card (w/ 32MB RAM). I think the problem is with the monitor, and it seems that the correct colors can be seen, if only for a few seconds.

Any advice on what this problem might be and how it can be tested or fixed?

Thanks,

So since I could not find any ATI cards worth
consideration at Best Buy I went to CompUSA and
found several ATI cards but can't remember seeing
one Nvidia card on the shelves and even the service
person was not familiar with them ???

So I purchased the cheapest ATI card I could get
for 50 bucks, a Rage 128 Pro 32MB and it works
just fine and I have no more GRAY LINES -
plus an extra 16 megs on the graphics card.

Also the monitor works better now -
can't remember it ever being this good when it
was brand new!

Alas as an extra, my computer is running much cooler
now and probably explains why it is so noisy since
they had to put an extra fan on the Intel chipper
to keep it from being over heated most likely by
this NVIDIA GRAPHICS CARD

What can I say?

Don

HP 8705i (just now figured out what HP8705i and HP8705a was
even though I asked that question for 2 years from HP)

i = Intel
a = AMD

16 MB Nvidia TNT2 Vanta 3D AGP

Problem:
Horizontal gray lines across the full length of the monitor
caused by smearing of text or dark colors displayed.
During the booting process, the smearing is the color of
the boot up screen.

Not the problem:
HP M70 monitor

Failed solutions:
Restoring the system
Restoring "outdated drivers" from HP
Tweaking the refresh rates
Resetting Nvidia hardware defaults
Service FAQ's from HP
Service FAQ's from Nvidia who does not even recognize this card

I am taking the card to Best Buy today and tell them about the
problem and see what they do first since they are who I bought
this computer from just a few days SHORT of 3 YEARS ago.

Thanks again, and for the info on the ATI cards of which I have
owned before and are still running just fine 15 years later.

Don

After reading the posts on this website I called DELL customer support. I wanted to avoid them giving me the troubleshooting run-around, so I just started off by telling them that I had re-installed the drivers several times, then the OS, then switched monitors, finally put the card in a different computer, and the result was always the same. Dell must be familiar with this problem, because where they would normally try to snowball me, instead they offered to ship a replacement card immediately. Luckily, I had about 3 weeks left on my 3 year warranty.

I would recommend that everone with this problem call your respective computer vendor, wheather it's DELL, Compaq, HP, Gateway, etc. and tell them the same story. It may be worth a new video card. Even if your product is out of warranty, you should still call. They might be generous as it is a very common nVidia card defect and the comptuer vendor will want you as a repeat customer.

The difference I see with most of the rest of you is that I have an old Gateway 400MHZ running Win 98.

Can't say as I'm inclined to go out and purchase a new video card for a computer that's worth about a hundred bucks.

I also have an HP,, seems like alot of Dell and HP's. Anyone have a home built PC this happpened on?

Has been a hot summer here and I just cleaned out my PCU fan of a fur coat of cat hair. But that was 2 months ago.

I've had the PC about 3 years now. Yuck. Sounds like it's shot.

Getting more frustrated with repeated calls to support and seeing these postings about the card failing again 1-2 years later pointed me to a better decision - BUY AN ATI CARD. Of course, I could have lied to Dell about the results, but why the hell would I want the same card again after going through all this?

I purchased an ATI 8500 card, XP recognized it right away and I was up and running in 10 minutes with no problems.

Nvidia should get this straightened out quick before losing more loyal customers. And Dell should assist by replacing these cards WITH A DIFFERENT CARD that does not have the overheating (?) problems that this one has.

I was having the same problem as everyone else with my NVIDIA card...until about 4 hours ago when I threw it in the trash.

Here's my personal 'case study' for the benefit of all:

System: 800MHz DELL with 256 RAM, 3 years old, came with factory-installed NVIDIA TNT2 32Mb video card.

Experience: Problem-free card since I've had it, until yesterday morning.

Issue: Gray shadowy lines across the screen behind text and graphics. Exact same issue as everyone else.

Solution: Toss your NVIDIA card out and replace it. I replaced mine with an ATI RADEON 7000 32Mb. $49 at CompUsa.

Notes:

1. Replace your card as your needs dictate. I don't play games or watch DVD's on my computer, so my needs aren't really that advanced. This new card has plenty of capability for me.

2. In my search for a solution, I visited a number of forums that offered possible causes, in particular the "your card has overheated due to low fan flow" kept coming up. I tend to think that the issue has much more to do with NVIDIA card technology. Just look at the posts here - every one of them involves an NVIDIA card.

: Overnight I suddenly developed horizontal gray lines across my screen. I have a 17" Compaq FS740 I am currently using the best driver available. I have restated, scandisk, let the damn thing sit for a while, tried different drivers....Is my monitor shot?...Or is there something I can do?

: Overnight I suddenly developed horizontal gray lines across my screen. I have a 17" Compaq FS740 I am currently using the best driver available. I have restated, scandisk, let the damn thing sit for a while, tried different drivers....Is my monitor shot?...Or is there something I can do?