My monitor will just go scrambled like its set at an unsupported resolution but its not. Any ideas? I have to be short, because theres no telling when it will happen.

Ive tried clearing cmos, reseating the card, new drivers, different combinations of ram, lower resolutions, safe mode.... Its been happening for about a week. radeon 9800 pro. Dfi NFII ultra a/l mainboard, Dell e151fpd LCD monitor, Corsair 512 meg ram. Channel Well 350w power supply. Any help would be greatly apprieciated.

You have an Nforce2 chipset and a Radeon card? Is there a conflict between the chipset video and the Radeon, i.e. the Nforce video has been disabled? Also, are you connecting your monitor to the right video port? Just need to make sure.

Did it start happening all of a sudden or is it a gradual change? Have you made any changes to your system (hardware, software, drivers, etc.)? Is your computer running cool enough? Excessive heat can cause all sorts of video problems.

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My mainboard has no onboard video, definatly the right video port. It did start all of the sudden. bought the video card 02/05/05, and didn't start having the problem till about a week ago. No other changes made. The hottest I ever saw it get was 160f, bios shuts the computer down at 230f. One odd thing is my power supply has fluctuated since the day I bought it. I can hear my fans change speed when I do anything on my comp. just moving the mouse will slow my fans down, like its drawing power. I know it probably shouldnt do that, but it worked fine until now. would the power supply cause resolution changes? my monitor has a menu button on it, and when the problem occurs I push that an it says "curreent resolution 700x470" or something crazy like that, and "optimum resolution 1024x768". My monitor only supports 800x600 or 1024x768. something is changing the resolution I guess? definatly not a heat problem cause it does it at startup when comp is cold. Sometimes does it at or during post, video card drivers havn't even loaded yet. Could it be in the master boot record? Reset the bios though and it still does it.

Sorry, I thought the NForce2 boards had built-in video.

It's possible your power supply isn't putting out the right amount of power. Or you could be having problems w/ juice coming from the power company. You could try a line conditioner or UPS to maintain constant power to your system. If you think it's your power supply, then you can check the individual power cords coming from it, though I think there might be some software available to do that.

Then there's always the virus issue. If it starts at boot, then technically it's possible there's a virus at fault. You might try running the "repair" function off the Windows CD to see if there's a corrupt video file on the system.

Since you're using an LCD, you're using a DVI connector, correct? I know that there's a few different versions of the DVI interface; maybe there's a conflict.

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Thanks for all your help Crystal! Yesterday morning I was having the typical problems, and on a reboot it came up scrambled, it was at the welcome screen, and I went behind the monitor and messed with the cord, and when my desktop came up it wasn't scrambled. It's never done that before. once scrambled it stayed scrambled, even if I alt-tab out of a game. It's been running since yesterday morning and hasn't done it. I have had soo much work to catch up on that I havn't had time to check this thread till right now. The true test is Battlefield Vietnam, It's always done it on that game most. So now that I have a little time I can try it out and see what happens. I will post and let you know what happens. Hopefully just a bad cord or connection.
Thanks again.

Well it didn't do it for about a day and a half, now it's back again. you mentioned a restore or something on the xp disk. Do you know the path? cause my disk doesn't list it in the menu. I have xp pro by the way. I'm thinking more and more it may be a bad monitor, or hardware related, Because it does it at post. It appears to be a rare problem. I found a page on google after searching for "garbled screen", this guy had all the same symptoms. In the end he solved it by clearing the cmos for twenty minutes. Didn't work for me. I think my next option is to take the monitor to my fathers office and hook it up to another computer for a few days, and hook another one up here.

I think that's an excellent idea, the best way to isolate it is to try is on a known good computer. Have you reset the monitor or checked the phase? I looked thoughout this thread and havn't seen what kind of hookup you have? DVI to DVI or are you using a DVI to DB15 connector? My LCD monitor is older and has a DB15 and I have to use an adapter. I also have a 9800pro and havn't had a problem with it.

The hookup is the same as on a crt, so I don't use any donggle or adapter, it plugs straight into the video card. I tried to hot swap another monitor after mine had gone garbled, the same image appeared. all straight lines and checkers. Is your card made by ATI, or another company? (ie. Sapphire, Azus). Mine is an ATI, and from all Iv'e read, it's NOT the better choice. Problems with bad solder on capacitors and I can't flash it to a 9800XT, where as most others you can. I got an arcticcooler for my card but I'm affraid to use it and void my warranty in case it's a bad card. Which is kinda what I'm leaning towards. I've already gone past the 30 days best buy gives us, so i'll have to send it to ATI. That sucks! It will probably take weeks.

I'd have to say it's the card. If you hot swapped the monitor and the same image showed up on the other monitor, the card is your best bet. With the new monitor, did it have a hard wired cable? If it doesn't, did you also change the cable? Try to see if you can replicate the problem completely with the new monitor. What I mean is, have you gotten a good image on the new monitor or just the garbled, see if you can get a good image and wait for it to fail on the new monitor. That should completely isolate the monitor as good or bad. If the monitor is proven good and the card is still under warranty, call up ATI and get it replaced. Mine is also "Made by ATI" but I have yet to have any problems and i've had it over a year.