Problem regarding flickering screen;ANy helP is much appreci

<-> SG

Observations:

1. Screen flickers (as in turns black for 1-3secs then returns messed up- that means some icons look distorted and are in the wrong place ).

Clicking on just about anything (e.g.open windows media player, IE, display cntrl panel) causes the screen to flicker and distorts such that IE can't scroll properly(sometimes can't scroll at all)...When you play the mp3 there's this block that's supposed to move with time, which just jams along the way. when you scroll over say a file, there's supposed to be something that pops up right? In this case, it pop ups but can't disappear fully, damaging the background. As more things are opened and closed, their backgrounds accumulate.

In the messed up screens, I only roughly gauge where the "clickable" icons are, or example to close the say, windows media player since only PARTs of the player can be seen

2. SAFE MODE, SAFE MODE With networking works perfectly fine. I'm using this to seek help..

3. White mouse cursor has these black lines/patches. Changing type of cursor doesn't help. MOUSE CURSOR is NORMAL when in SAFE MODE. Changing the display resolution, hardware acceleration, downloading the newest drivers don't help

4. When XP loads(booting up), that is, the black screen with the windows logo and the blue thing that moves from Left to Right ,color of windows logo is distorted by lines like random dashed lines.

-Virus scans in ALL MODES didn't reveal anything
My virus definitions are up to date.

HISTORY

-As far as I remember, this first occured after I visited some blogs.
I was previously uninstalling some demos of recent games like call of duty 4.

SPECS of my DELL com
3.0GHz Pentium D
2.0 GB RAM
256MB Nvidia 6800
250GB HDD

PLease do help!!!! HaPpy fEstive seAson to all!=)

wishboy SG

graphic card drivers?

maybe graphic card faulty?
if got spare pc, try plugging in the graphic card from this com to that com
see if the other pc's screen flicker too

ndmmxiaomayi SG

Latest drivers no go, use an older version.

<-> SG

Yes, you're right. Indeed, uninstalling the drivers helped.

But the problem would resurface after a Restart.

To solve this, I carelessly deleted all nvidia files. This solved the problem, as the display would now not use the nvidia graphics card. This is shown under the display settings, where it's now

display:
(Default Monitor) on

instead of

display:
nVidia ..etc..

This also means that all display quality would be substandard.

I've tried also to use the dell drivers disc to reinstall the OLD drivers after uninstalling nVIDIA drivers from the ADD/REMOVE programmes function. HOWEVER, the problem returns, could it be that some corrupted file is affecting the process?

If there're any better ways to go about the new problem, I would certainly appreciate constructive solutions. Thanks to all who replied! =)

ndmmxiaomayi SG

Is this a separate graphics card or on-board graphics card?

If it's on-board, don't disable it. You will end up with no graphics and Windows will use the default, which is freaking ugly and resolution are quite low.

If it's a separate graphics card, then try disabling it. See if Windows could find an alternative and use it. Usually this works fine. Just that you won't be able to use high resolution.