Laffertytig Posted February 27, 2005 Share Posted February 27, 2005 im using an old pc as my pc's went on the blink. when i turn it on windows loads up all right but the screen is totally distorted with numbers and colours. i just got this pc last month so is it a hardware problem or virus or what? ps, how do i format my hard drive amd reinstall windows as this pc is virus ridden 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 If these look like DOS-based characters and colors, then I would guess that the video memory has gone bad (the videocard). However this particular scenario would happen before you load Windows. If this happens after Windows has loaded up then it may just be a misconfiguration or the videocard is still the culprit. Can you provide more details on your system (i.e. - Windows version, motherboard, videocard, etc.) ? Depending on which version of Windows you want to install on this computer, often you can boot from the CD and for Windows 2000 & XP you can delete and recreate the partition during the install process (while it is DOS-character based). Once you're done partitioning the next step is formatting in NTFS or FAT32 (NTFS is preferred for Windows 2000 & XP). For Windows 98/ME I can't recall off-hand if the CDROM based setup allows you to partition and format. I believe if you press F8 while booting from the Setup CD of Win98/ME you may get a menu to boot to a DOS prompt. In the Win9x/Win98 directory there is a format.com command you can use to format (but not partition) your hard drive. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laffertytig Posted February 28, 2005 Author Share Posted February 28, 2005 just tryed to reinstall windows but as soon as i turn it on the screen is all messed up so i cant see what im doin. u reckon ive got a dodgy video card then? i only got it 3 weeks ago 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 You make it too hard to debug for us. We can't even figure out whether Windows actually tries to start or whether the computer is messed up right after turning on, before loading any OS. You first post implies the former, the last post the latter. Can you post a photo? Did the video card ever work? Can you check the computer with your old card? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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