Weird characters on screen

hitmann · 27 Jun 2006 at 08:42

My mum's computer is showing weird characters at boot screen and even in BIOS instead of the usual letters. It cannot log into Win XP either, as the monitor switches off a bit after the Windows boot screen. Safe Mode works fine, with the weird characters still at the Windows boot selection screen, but not in Safe Mode.
I've scanned for viruses and spyware but found nothing. She only uses it for word processing and music.

I'm really lost here and don't know what to do else. Could someone please show me the light?

Colbaker · 27 Jun 2006 at 12:30

Sounds like a corrupt Bios, You might need to flash it, or you could be seeing a corrupt Hard disk drive model, If so try the cable.

Colbaker · 27 Jun 2006 at 12:31

Also could be corrupt memory on the video card.

me227 · 27 Jun 2006 at 12:32

Colbaker said:
Also could be corrupt memory on the video card.

More than likely this. I had the exactly same problems about two weeks ago.

sic6six · 27 Jun 2006 at 12:37

more than likely the boot sector or bios. video cards dont cause unusual characters to appear on the screen. i think he means characters like: á ú. the usual ones you dont see at boot. i had the same problem. try resetting the bios on your pc and if that fails it may mean the boot sector has corrupt

t31os · 27 Jun 2006 at 18:21

me227 said:
More than likely this. I had the exactly same problems about two weeks ago.

Have also seen this on duff vid cards.

If you have another PC in the house, try swapping a few parts for testing.

Defcon5 · 27 Jun 2006 at 22:09

Iv had this problem when clocking ram too much, try running mamtest for a few hours see if it throws anything up