My Computer ExplodedFollow

Okay, not literally, but recently as I was starting up StarCraft 2, my screen turned a weird shade of pink, the entire system froze, and I had to do a hard shutdown. After that, each time I tried to restart my system, the initial OS loading screens would have odd colored patterns over them: checkered red boxes, vertical green lines, some sort of dot-matrix looking thing, etc. Windows will not initialize, and the "Windows Start-up Repair" tool that automatically runs after each failed start-up attempt has yet to resolve the issue.

I think my video card is fried, but without it, I have no monitor hookups, so I can't try running the system without it. Is there any way to diagnose the problem on my own, or am I resigned to bringing the whole rig into a shop and paying some overly clever high-schooler to do it for me?

I'd say it's the video card. Three times the same thing happened to me and it was the video card.

It started as strange artifacts, fuzz, etc. on the screen, and then eventually the system locked up completely with pink hue and blocks all over the screen. Luckily I had two running in SLI and just swapped them around/removed one at a time til it worked.

I'd say buy another Video card, install it, and that will likely fix the issue.

System is a Dell XPS 410.

Will try removing the video card and report back with results. Thanks for the responses.

Well, I got the video card out without problems, but there are no VGA or DVI monitor ports on the motherboard. Is there any way to test the rig to verify that it's only the video card that's fried, or will I have to replace it first?