PERSISTANT WATERMARKS ON SCREEN IS THIS A VIRUS?

Attached is a screen dump of my desktop. The strange blue marks that look vaguely like a Windows logo appeared a few days ago. I have tried viuss scans, Spybot, adaware etc. but the marks stay on every screen, changing colour to maintain contrast.

They first appeared while I was in the middle of an online game, and I haven't been able to get rid of them since.

It is not screen burn, as they move round the screen. They now seem to switch on on the windows load up screen

Anyone able to confirm if this is a virus, or may be another problem?

 

What exactly did you scan with? A well known antivirus? Like KAV, NOD32 etc? If you used a free one then I would suggest giving KAV's online scanner a try, but I honestly don't think it is a virus, looks more like a video rendering problem. Maybe your video card is on its last leg. Try updating your video drivers and not overclocking your video card if you do.

 

I agree, I've never heard of any virus doing anything like that. This is almost certainly a problem with your video card, either the card itself or the drivers (possibly something like DirectX, but not as likely). You might download a Linux live-cd, like Knoppix. If the problem appears in Knoppix, then you've got a hardware problem, if not then you know it's something with your drivers or Windows.

 

Thanks guys. I use McAfees virus scan. I'll try the reloading video drivers.. Card is an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 256Meg, and is only about 9 momths old. so I don't think it's on the way out.

I'll try some of the hardware forums as well.

 

Curious I had exactly the same problem with a similar graphics card at around the same time period you had the problem.

It was definitely something to do with the graphics card, since the water marks disappeared when i disabled it.

I managed to fix the problem though.

 

I purchased the same video card a couple of months ago and have the same problem. The newest nvidia driver (81.98 I think) helped considerably but I still get the water marks on a black screen. Fernando, how did you fix this?