Cannot read XP Install Text

Hi all

I have decided to do a fresh unstall of XP Home on my laptop but I cannot read the text. It is not that it is the wrong language it just appears to be a completely random series of characters and letters.

Anybody have any idea what may be causing this and/or how to correct it?

 

Have I stumped everybody on the forum with this one?

 

Nope!

I'd say it was a graphics card problem. Had the same problem myself, but it was during the text-based part of a Linux install. Same thing happened when I tried to install XP. Try with a different graphics card if you can.

EDIT: Oh, its a laptop... Ut oh. I'd try returning it or have the manufacture look at it in that case.

 

I cannot see it being a graphics card problem as it currently has XP installed. I did think it may be the bios so I have updated that through the windows interface.

 

Well, let me see... You added any new system ram recently? It is certainly somthing related to the graphics subset, and laptops use system ram for graphics (generally speaking).

It might be the bios, possibly, but I would flash that out of the Windows Environment if I were you... just to be sure it actually worked.

 

I have already stated that I had flashed the bios but it made no difference. I tried to run docmem to test the memory out but cannot make out the text in that either.

 

I know you said you flashed the bios....

I suggested that you tried to flash without windows.

Anyway. Graphic corruption in text-only modes generally indicates a problem with graphics. Since the charachters are stored in graphics memory (whether that is on the card itself or in the system ram), and are processed by the graphics chipset (again, built in or on a seperate card) before they are shown on screen, it is quite likley that some part of that graphics process is corrupting the data.

In the case of a laptop, it is most likely that the memory used for grahpics is within the system ram. Thus the question about adding memory recently. Bad sticks of ram happen.

The fact that docmem has graphic corruption as well supports this conclusion. There is no way a software fault can be in Windows and a completely seperate operating system as well.

Windows may appear to run correctly, but I suspect that you'll be getting artifacts, you just don't notice them.

As a question, does BIOS setup show up correctly? If not that makes it almost certain that there is a hardware problem.

 

*Bump*

Did you get to the bottom of the problem?