M
Matthew.S.Adler
My wife is having major problems with her laptop. She has a Dell
Inspiron 8200 running XP Pro SP2, Pentium 4 2 GHz with 512 MB of RAM.
Last week, when she started her computer, the bios looked a bit odd, as
did the Windows loading screen with alternating thick vertical bars.
Once Windows loads, one of two things happens:
Windows loads like normal, yet the screen becomes more and more hazy as
time goes by with a rainbow haze. The computer maintains normal usage.
The rainbow haze also follows rapidly moving objects, such as the
mouse cursor or dragged windows.
A white washed out screen with vertical bars slowly transitions into a
black or blue screen. When this happens, Windows will not load
completely or be accessible ctrl+alt+delete is not accessible either.
There are no problems when I start the computer in safe mode. It acts
perfectly normal.
I have tried scanning for a virus and spyware, using Norton Anti-Virus,
Spyboy Search and Destroy and AdAware. I have also tried replacing the
RAM. Finally, I tried restoring the computer using System Restore.
None of these worked.
There is a possibility that this all started after our dogs knocked a
small class of water near the laptop. As far as we could tell the
water briefly touched the external case of the computer, but I won't
rule out water damage.
My thoughts are water damage, spontanious bad driver(s) or a really
invasive virus.
I have posted a few photos of the problems at a computer help message
board:
http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1153710837
Thank you in advance!
Inspiron 8200 running XP Pro SP2, Pentium 4 2 GHz with 512 MB of RAM.
Last week, when she started her computer, the bios looked a bit odd, as
did the Windows loading screen with alternating thick vertical bars.
Once Windows loads, one of two things happens:
Windows loads like normal, yet the screen becomes more and more hazy as
time goes by with a rainbow haze. The computer maintains normal usage.
The rainbow haze also follows rapidly moving objects, such as the
mouse cursor or dragged windows.
A white washed out screen with vertical bars slowly transitions into a
black or blue screen. When this happens, Windows will not load
completely or be accessible ctrl+alt+delete is not accessible either.
There are no problems when I start the computer in safe mode. It acts
perfectly normal.
I have tried scanning for a virus and spyware, using Norton Anti-Virus,
Spyboy Search and Destroy and AdAware. I have also tried replacing the
RAM. Finally, I tried restoring the computer using System Restore.
None of these worked.
There is a possibility that this all started after our dogs knocked a
small class of water near the laptop. As far as we could tell the
water briefly touched the external case of the computer, but I won't
rule out water damage.
My thoughts are water damage, spontanious bad driver(s) or a really
invasive virus.
I have posted a few photos of the problems at a computer help message
board:
http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1153710837
Thank you in advance!