Probably a memory artifact problem. I'd inspect the entire card surface for bent wires or whatever.

I think I found the issue.

I'd be surprised if that is it, especially as there are no components in that area at all. Test for a shorty circuit, if there aren't any then that's probably not it.

Another one I found at the VGA port:

Found out the port has rusty solder points or missing solder.

Diagnosed the card even further, and the one SMD cap by the VGA port is dead (Open Loop on the multimeter) and the other one still works. That, and Windows 98SE refuses to boot by giving me this error:

1Windows Protection Error. You need to restart your computer.

MS-DOS boots perfectly without issues, so my guess is a bad driver. Any ideas?

Booting into Safe Mode (F8) is an option to bypass video drivers. You can then remove those drivers, I think, although it might be a bit tricky. And capacitors can usually be changed out, so if it's a bad cap, you might try replacing it.

I had issues on my Abit KX7-333 motherboard with RAM sticks, hard drives shutting down, etc. Examining the board, I found a number of bulging caps. So I had a guy replace EVERY SINGLE CAP on the board with brand new ones. Now, the HDD is rock-solid stable. The RAM sticks that were testing bad suddenly test perfectly fine with MemTest x86. The CPU gets a more stable voltage supply and seems to actually work FASTER now. It's just a better experience. Sure, it was expensive at almost $130, but that's what you'd pay for a new MB today anyway.

Did my first desoldering job on an nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 card (VGA port) after purchasing electrical flux and a desoldering iron with the pump at my local computer store, and was successful.

VGA

GPU (upside)

GPU (downside)

I looked at the PCB where the VGA connector goes, and I noticed one of the solder points is dark and one of the pins had a rust spot on it. Going to order new VGA connectors and fix the dark solder spot.

I also need to re-trace the board since it took a beating (screwdriver slipped on it after I removed the busted VGA connector).

If you were not in the usa but near my country, I would've gladly sent you another tnt2 m64 card I don't use for cheap price. I don't use it and I'll probably never do.

I looked at the card again and I noticed one eyelet/rivet is damaged, so there are two methods of repairing the card:

1) Purchase a new rivet/eyelet
2) Hotwire the VGA connector pin to the end of the trace