is the video card working?

Hi all.
I've got some issues with my pc at work and would love to know how i can determine if my video card is working properly.
the screen resolution is at 1280x1024 and any images are fine.
When i watch video on media player the picture is a combination of red, green, orange and blue - as if codecs are missing.
going into the media player options and switching off the hardware rendering for video and dvd fixes the problem.
I assume from that then, that i've switched off the video card and the CPU is processing the video rather than the video card.

I should add that because of my employers IT department being so poor, i'm running IE6, media player version 9 (i think) XP with SP2 (but no updates since May 06) and graphics drivers that are 2 years out of date - the card is ATI Radeon X700 with drivers dated may 05

I'm not an administrator for my office pc so i can't install any programs - is there anything i can do or check that will confirm if my video card is working properly?
thanks

 

Hello darich,

You can start by running dxdiag. Start > run > type dxdiag and go thru the built in diagnotics. It'll also give you info on the card, and the directX and driver versions.

By the sound of the symptoms, either you need updated drivers or codecs.

 

You're suffering from the classic problem known as the "my movies look like rainbows when hardware acceleration is enabled" problem.

I suffered from it too when I used WMP 9. I never got a real explanation but was told to upgrade WMP. I did, to WMP 11, and never had the problem again.

 

thanks.
I've already done the dxdiag thing and ran the tests - which seemed to be ok.
Our IT dept is about to install drivers (which it has taken them 6weeks to test) so hopefully it'll solve the problem.
Looks like our management and IT management will be squaring up to each other soon!!!
thanks again.
D

 

I tried a variety of drivers to no effect. I don't think it's an Nvidia/ATI problem. I think it's a WMP problem.