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Have you ever had a PC serviced somewhere?

I've never had a PC fixed anywhere but something wacky has happened to mine while I was at work last night, naturally just after I get a huge monitor! Don't know what exactly has happened, the computer has given me no messages that stay up long enough to read. I do see message boxes flash when it starts up windows but they're like a camera flash, too quick to recognize anything more than the shape of a box. I came home last night and it wouldn't get started at all. The picture looked like a scrambled cable screen, when I did get it up and running it kept shutting itself off. Finally I gave up trying at 7 am. Today it seems to stay running (I'm using it now) but the page scrolling online and in word documents is very poor, not smooth - even though the "smooth scrolling" option is checked in Displays or wherever I found it on the control panel.

I can only run in max resolution in 16 bit color, not 32 bit. The "visuals" that Microsoft media player shows while you listen to a CD are very slow and jerky. That's what shut the PC down completely last night was sticking a music CD in and the media player video started up and froze solid while the music kept going. I had to reinstall my tablet this morning so I could use Photoshop. That works ok as there's no animation, just large files using the system RAM. Bryce 3D and my DAZ 3D anatomy software is basically dead in the water though. All this leads me to imagine that maybe my video card (A GeForce 8800) is not responding? But I don't know much about these things since it's a custom build. With my old store bought PCs I'd just stick the reboot disk in. I even tried that numerous times last night and apparently I don't understand what it's asking me, I tried rebootng from disk, partitions, etc but none of that got me anywhere. I have only 3 driver CDs for this PC: a disk for WIN XP 64, the Motherboard and the Videocard. Somehow it's working today but it's just not the same as it was yesterday before I left for work. I always turn it off when I leave and have it plugged into a surge protector. The curious thing is that when I came home at 5 am my terrarium lamps were still on and my timer is dead as well... Is this the wrath of the gods I keep hearing about???? lol!

Anyway, has anyone ever taken their PC somewhere to get it serviced? Is Best Buy's "Geek Squad" a good place to go? There's one of their shops on my way to work but I don't know if they only service PCs bought at Best Buy or corporate built / name brand models...? I have all my personal files on the second harddrive (and backed up now on a couple flash drives) but reinstalling an Operating System or an all new one on drive C should leave my own stuff alone on drive D, is that somewhat correct? If I haul this all the way in I'd like to get them to put XP 32 on it and dump this crummy XP 64 that I can't do a lot with.

Can I move (not copy) an application (Photoshop 7) from drive C to drive D without screwing the program up? I know I can not copy it to a backup drive and install it on another computer. I've already tried that and it won't install fully on the laptop. I can't find the Photoshop disk anymore (stolen by pixies) so I only have the operational copy that's on drive C which will be gone if I get it drive C redone or replaced with the new OS... Can it be saved somehow or will I be gettng a new version of Photoshop this week as well as getting repairs?

Thanks for any input you may have!
 
I've just found the video card (couldn't find the entry for it last night) it says "This device can not start because it has a problem (Code 10)". Anyone here have a GeForce 8800 and know what that's supposed to mean? Hopefully something other than spending more $... I did try reinstalling the driver for it earlier today hoping that would do something.
 
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