Why are games on my PC not recognizing my Video Card?

[Super Cool Dude]

I just downloaded the latest drivers form nVidia. I have a nVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200 with TV/Out and have the standard Ti 4200 driver installed. I have been playing games normally, so it's not that the graphics card is unable to play games, don't simply say "You're card isn't working".

Yesterday, out of nowhere, my games stopped working and started acting like the Standard VGA Graphics were working, and all of my games defaulted to using the Software graphics rather than Hardware. When switched to Hardware, I'd get a BSOD...

I tried uninstalling my driver, using DriverCleaner, then reinstalling it, but still to no avail. This is very random since it WAS working for the last few years and stopped out of nowhere yesterday.

 

One thing I will note is that I did recently have the infamous "Windows Security Suite Virus".

[Match]

Hi SCD

 

what does the device manager say about your GPU?

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, also further to Match's question, have you had a look inside, is there any fluff, dust or other stuff built up on the fans, especially the graphics card fan? If so it could have overheated and perhaps damaged it.