I know this should go on a tech forum, but i thought i'd ask you guys

My Computer:

Dual Core 2.16GHz
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7600GT


I was playing Fallout New vegas, and was walking along when a person approached me. Then the screen went green and orange, with little lines. I crtl+alted+dltd, and quit out New Vegas. The desktop had the same lines. I shut down my computer, and when I restarted it, i came up to the Boot Camp load up screen, with the same green and coloured lines. Booting Windows doesn't work, nor does Mac (when i try to boot up Mac it shows the loading icon and then says "please restart). They both have colour problems. What should I do? Is it the game's fault, overheating or what? Should I try booting form the Mac OSX disc and reinstalling it?

Almost sounds like your videocard died/overheated.
I'd disconnect the power and give it like 30 minutes if you haven't done that already.

ok i'll try that

BTW forgot to say it's an iMAC 24 inch

Yeah, sounds like an overheating problem.

So what has to happen now?

I've repaired this iMac twice (once under warranty, the last time was a blown power)

Damn I had FNV on for a long time, maybe 2-3 hours, but didnt think this'd happen...

Probably you have to buy a new vga.

Definitely GPU overheat.

Pull the card out, give it a thorough brush to get the dust out of the heatsink fins (its the leading cause of overheat in my experience [okay okay, technically the leading cause of overheating is HEAT but...]) and then re-seat it. Sometimes the card has to be physically removed and replaced and it will come back to life.

Also when its on, check to see how fast the fan is spinning, if its sluggish it might need replacing with an aftermarket cooler or at least a squirt of WD40

Graphic card on imac is integrated on motherboard.

New Vegas is so buggy it will actually kill your graphics card. The only way they could make that game more unstable is if the disc shot out of your CD drive and decapitated you when launching the game.

Sure? I opted for a graphics update when we bought ours. The original was something below, and the upgrade was my 7600GT

Integrated? I thought they were all based on expansion cards nowdays, one more reason not to get a mac then if thats the caseThe overheating MIGHT be an issue depending on how long you've waited. There is a chance that its dead since a computer won't boot without a GPU. It might also be worth pulling all but 1 stick of ram out and testing them individually since damaged ram can stop a computer booting
Or we could keep the discussion in the realm of sanity and agree that software cannot kill hardware without access to its firmware which FNV sure as fuck doesn't have

Yeah I regret buying the iMac. It's caused us a lot of hell. I think i'll leave it overnight, and then tomorrow morning check out that RAM and etc. i've waited only 15 minutes now.

Thanks a lot, you guys have been very helpful!

Well after 15 minutes it should probably have cooled off enough to at least try booting.

Don't suppose macs beep when they have a boot fault do they? Thats the only good use for the PC speaker

Three short beeps, three long beeps and three more short beeps for "buy a new computer".