can no longer run second life after pc crash

hi.....ive been running s/l on my pc for over 3 weeks with no common problems until wednesday nite when the prgramme crashed when i was trying to tp from region to the next.
my screen started flickering then my whole pc just froze and shut its self down.

since this problem everytime i try and log into s/l i get to the log in page and its just freezes on me,i also get little weird speckles appear on my screen and the only thing i can do is turn my pc off manually.

ive been through the usual reinstal windows xp and updated all my drivers but i still get the same problem.....s/l just freezes on me and crashes my pc

my pc has the following specification........AMD athlon 64x2 dual core processor 3600+
2.0gb ram....nvidia geforce 8400 gs graphics card and runs windows xp service pack 3

any ideas as to a solution to this problem would be greatly appreciated as ive just about given up.....could it be my graphics card has died???


many thxs

katrina

You've reinstalled your XP, updated it, uninstalled SL plus updated all your drivers. Assuming when you reinstalled XP, you also did a hard drive (or partition) format, you've just about illiminated everything but hardware. So, to answer your question.....yes, it could be your graphics card. Now if you merely "repaired" your XP installation instead of do a clean install you could still have driver or other software problems giving you your issue.

In case you did not do a clean install here's what I would do. Go to nVidia's website and download the current driver for your card and save it to your disk. Next shut down your computer and remove the side of the case and thourghly clean it out using a can of compressed air.......make sure you blow through all fans, vents, nooks and crannies to get all the dust out. While you have the side off your case make sure your video card and memory modules are firmly seated in their slots (carefully removing them and reseating them to make sure would help). Boot up your computer and remove any and all video drivers that are installed on your system........if you don't have a "driver cleaner" program, uninstall them. That process will require you to reboot your computer for all the changes to take effect. On Windows coming back up you'll get a message about finding new hardware (that's your video card without a driver) and Windows will want to search for and install a driver.........close the window (don't allow Windows to do that). The launch driver installation setup program and following the instructions. And you'll have to restart Windows again for the installation to complete. This time you will be using your new driver. Try SL again...........hopefully that fixes it for you. Otherwise it's looking grim for that card.