Graphics Card Problems

I've had my graphics card (Radeon 9600) for a couple of years, and never had any problems before a few months ago. Now, sometimes I'll be surfing the web, and all of a sudden my screen goes black. Sometimes the screen comes back on and all the icons refresh, and sometimes the screen stays black. The monitor is still receiving a signal even when it's black.

Sometimes when the screen refreshes, my mouse cursor comes back as a square box instead of a pointer. Also, sometimes I click on a weblink and I hear a system beep and a few seconds later, the graphics crash.

I'm assuming this is a problem with my graphics card, but I'm not sure what to do. When this started happening a few months ago, I updated to the latest drivers, and until last night, everything was working fine. Now, it seems to crash every few minutes. I don't have much open at the time (IE and Trillian, usually). Any ideas?

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Originally Posted by Grawl

Try the card on another system or try another card in your system. The outcome of that should say enough.

I don't have another computer to try the card in, and I'm not crazy about buying a new card unless I'm certain that's the problem. Could it be a memory issue, or some sort of spyware, or could the card be overheating somehow? Stupid question, I'm sure, but I'm not much of a computer person.

There's nowhere I can't reach.