What do I do now? I noticed that it still does that thing where the desktop picture dissapears and when I hover over icons they are highlighted in black. Does this mean an OS corruption since the GPU seems to be eliminated from the picture?
I would see if I could borrow another Graphics card from someone and give it a try for a day or two. It sounds to me like your graphics card is completely dead or there is a problem with your PCIe slot. Another card is the only way to know for sure.
If I don't get any more BSOD's would that mean that the GPU was the problem the whole time? I'm going to play it by ear at this point and wait for something to happen and report back here.
Do you know why those minor glitches still happen though? Like the highlight graphic staying on icons and the desktop background sometimes going black? It feels like weird corruptions in the OS or something, how would I diagnose that?
I have no idea. But if we can get the sfc /scannow and DISM commands to run successfully, they should fix it.
So would I just run the sfc until it gives me a "no corruption" message? And then run the DISM until it gives me the all clear?
DISM isn't necessary if SFC fixes the corruption.
Only if SFC says it can't fix the problems, after a few tries, you'll need to run DISM to restore SFC. If SFC can't fix it after a few tries it usually means the source is corrupted what can be resolved with DISM.
Just a FYI
Something strange just happened. I turned the PC off after using it and when I came back to turn it on the screen was black, same problem. So I plugged the DVI cord form the MB port to the GPU port and heard a successful ding sound and the screen was back to normal. Desktop background was black but still works fine.
Checked GPU-Z and the GPU shows up there. Weird?
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