[jasonevans]

please can some help me, my computer is basically dead!

I have a alienware area 51 machine, windows xp pro, with 2gb ram, a pentium D extreme edition 3.20ghz, and a 400gb raid 0 Hard drive (no partition) and a nvidia gforce 256mb extreme edition graphics card. That said here is my problem.

Basically my computer was fine until i turned it on saturday morning.

When i turn it on now i have 3 major things wrong:

1. when the system is loading, while going through the motions and bios screens, instead of listing all the writing normal all the writing is screwed. It is all smileys faces, spade symbols, and the writing is impossible to make out.

2. The system does load into windows but there is considerable slow down on the interface of the system, for example it seems like i have patched in to my system maually using VM ware or gotomypc.com.

3. the standby option is missing on my computer. As well as this my screen is plastered with yellow lines all over it. Again this is well visable when i turn the computer on and its loading. It is also like this in the bios when i press f2.

I have completed formatted my hard drive, and reinstalled my windows os. I am using a genuine widnows version b4 u ask, and yes i have the cd.

Does anyone have any idea why this has happened 2 my machine, as even after doing the complete format and clean windows os install the lines are still there and the standby option is gone!

Also what can i do to fix this?? Please see my print screen where you can cleary see my yellow lined screen and also the no standby option that is missing!


HAVE DIABLED GRAPHICS CARD AND ALSO TAKEN OUT AND PUT BACK IN YET IT STILL HAPPENS IN BOTH SITUATIONS!

Help!

Thanks

Jason

[muckshifter]

when the system is loading, while going through the motions and bios screens, instead of listing all the writing normal all the writing is screwed. It is all smileys faces, spade symbols, and the writing is impossible to make out.

Hmmm, that is a sure sign that your CPU and or BIOS chip are failing ... at one time it was caused by a BIOS virus ... try reseating the CPU

Call their Tech Sup', for the price you propably paid they should be on your doorstep.

[masterkeedu]

i dont know alot but it sounds like a nasty infection to me.

formatting does not always rewrite the master boot sector.

i would use something like BartPE(freeware) to load from another device then your harddrive,

if that works you know where the problem is/isn't.

You can also throw Symantec on the BartPE boot device to scan the system for foul pay before it gets a chance to load.

NOTE:
BartPE allows windows to be crushed onto a disc that can boot your machine completely isolated from the existing windows startup.