At boot up computer has misspelled words and extra characters

[purewater]

My computer froze a 2.66 512 ram gateway running window xp home.

I could not alt tab out of program so I hit the power button. Know on boot up, there is tons of extra characters and misspelled words. For instance

"please any key to bggt from disk"

" Start Wandows Fgrmally"

This would be a minor inconvience, but it can not go to windows anymore. I left from chicago returned after 1 week, surprisingly it was working fine, but that only lasted a few hours, and froze up again.

Tried reparing windows didn't help, any advice what todo, my friends are stumped and i have limited computer know how

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's.. pretty wild. Have your tried (temporarily) swapping in a different video card, and seeing if the BIOS boot-up menus and things are still corrupted like that? I'm guessing that there is something wrong with the RAM on your current video card, possibly overheated and/or damaged somehow. Do any of the characters have flickering colors/lines, or spastically change in appearance, without doing anything else to the machine (or if you hit the PAUSE key to stop bootup)? That's almost certainly the video RAM then.

If that doesn't happen, it could be your regular RAM, or your CPU or its cache, although generally if it's the last two items, it won't even POST properly at all.

 

[Uncle Bob]

sounds to me like faulty ram or possibly faulty cpu.

see if there's more than one stick of ram installed and if there is try running with just one installed. If the same problem persists, swap the other stick into the machine.

also, check the cpu fan is running by switching the pc on with the cover removed.

 

[KB]

Try resetting the CMOS in case its corrupted. What are your temps in the BIOS?

 

[Slikkster]

I'm a little skeptical here. I'd like to see a screenshot.

 

[purewater]

Thanks for your input much appreciated.

To give an update, I called gateway technical service, they seemed perplexed.

Asked me to reinstall windows-----didn't fix problem

Asked me to flash the bios---- didn't fix problem

Asked me to format C and D drive and install windows------didn't fix problem

Now they asking me to Zero my harddrive----- going to try that tomorrow but don't really see how that would help.

I was able to boot into windows if i selected, vga mode.

To silkkster " I'm a little skeptical here. I'd like to see a screenshot."

I'll borrow a digital camera to take screen shoot, as its seems this not a commmon problem.

 

[helpmeout]

"as its seems this not a commmon problem".

In the lead for the "understatement of the year" award.

 

[Slikkster]

Kind of like William Hung saying "I've had no professional training for singing".

 

[jmagg]

I've seen garbled harddrive detection at bootup. Reseat ata cables at the mobo and the drives.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: purewater
To give an update, I called gateway technical service, they seemed perplexed.

Is this a laptop? I was assuming that this was a desktop. Have you installed a PCI video card (if your current video is "onboard video" - although if so, that would indicate a potential RAM problem or a bad bit on a DIMM socket), or swapped out your current video card for a known-good PCI card to test with?

If these are all BIOS boot messages that are garbled (and only those), and you've flashed your BIOS at all in this machine - you may have simply corrupted it, if the hardware was unstable when you flashed it, although flash programs generally do a readback after programming to verify the contents so this sort of thing shouldn't happen that way.

 

[Gentle]

Just a few observations.

You stated you were away for a week.

Was your computer left on during this time?

You may also want to consider the possibility of your video card being the culprit.

Anyway, good luck.

Gentle

 

[TexDotCom]

"I was able to boot into windows if i selected, vga mode."


Maybe I'm missing something here, but this seems like a pretty good indicator of a video card issue. If this is a desktop, I'd recommend swapping the card with another, verifiably good card to see if this resolves the issue. This would, of course, be difficult (read, darn near impossible) with a laptop.

I hope this helps.