Game Flickers. Chess Like

[Yanez]

Hi, ever since today, when i play any game after a while it starts to flicker. Like itll show all these weird colors on the screen, my game character looks deform etc. Also, when i restart, The Windows load screen in the beginning also looks like it. Everything else seems to be normal except for the top part of the screen where the "Back" "Reload" buttons are for IE. They look with lines through them.
I just downloaded the latest ATI driver but no luck, cleaned my video card but no luck. Ive been using this video card and playing these games for months, but the problem started today.

I have an Ati Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB , driver 7.1.
I also have the latest Direct X.
Windows XP Home Edition. 1 Gig of ram etc.

If anyone has any hints or fix, it would be greatly appreciated.
Also, the fans are working correctly.

 

[PC eye]

I ran into a straight line across the screen when first swapping an MSI GeForce FX5200 128mb video card for an ATI Radeon 9550 256mb card that also runs the 9660 chip. This would be seen at the settings menu in Soldier of Fortune II where it would keep scrolling from top to bottom and start again at the top. But nothing seen in Half Life 2 a more demanding game later?!

If your card isn't overheating or otherwise failing especially when also seen at startup you may have to look at something like memory faults now being seen or a driver clash with something running in the background. Too new of a Catalyst Control Center or just plain drivers can cause problems. Once a model reaches a certain age ATI's updates can raise havoc if the model has suddenly become a discontinued item.

Try going with the ATI archives for an older 5.12 or 6.1-6.5 update to see if that cleans this up. If you have a full install or recovery disk for Windows onhand you can also try the "sfc /scannow" command at the Run prompt for the system file checker and a free registry cleaner. http://www.majorgeeks.com/RegCleaner_d460.html