Radeon 9600 Pro, vertical lines on monitor during boot and in windows....is the card bad?

Make sure that when you connected it, that the screws on the sides of the connection are screwed in all the way. I've had it where I forgot to turn the screws on the connection and my monitor was displaying alot of odd and off colors, for example, green and red lines on one side, etc. When I turned the screws to make a tight connection, all the colors went back to normal and I didn't have anymore trouble since.. Also make sure that you have the right driver installed. If you have all of this right then I would ume the the card got messed up somehow, maybe from mishandling or you had stashed it away somewhere where a component on the chipset of the card got damaged or something. Also, maybe it's just old and almost close to the end of its life.