Suspect bad driver causing lined screen

Hi

My brother has an HP desktop with windows XP sp2. The computer began booting up and then before windows came up the screen went all lined so you couldn't view anything. After re booting a number of times, windows loaded normally and I was able to go into device manager and uninstall a bad driver with the yellow mark. The computer worked fine, for a couple of months. Now the lines are back, and nothing on windows can be seen. I get the lines when I try to boot into safe mode. I havn't been able to get a viewable screen to try and disable the driver. Is there any other way I might be able to get in? Would it be worth popping the memory battery out and disconnecting the SATA hard drive for a few minutes?

PS.
The computer was bought with windows 7 installed and got corrupted. The recovery discs did not work, so I installed windows XP on it. I then downloaded the necessary drivers to get the hardware working. It has been working fine for about a year.

 

Do you have a different monitor available (or can you borrow one) to hook up to the PC?

Since the problem also happens in Safe Mode, my guess is your monitor is going bad.

 

When I had a problem similar to this, it was caused by the memory sticks being jarred a bit.

I reseated the sticks and it fixed it.

You might also run Memtest to see if any sticks are bad.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/content/p...y.php?do=postreply&t=284095&ss=5184j9833550j8

 

Hi

Thanks for the replies. The screen is viewable up until it clicks into the CPU. When I press F8 I only see lines so do not know if I have gone into safe mode. I have tested using a spare monitor and I still get lines after clicking into the CPU. I will try reseating the RAM as suggested. I can't run the memory test as I don't get anything apart from fuzz and lines on the screen, so will be unable to see where to click to install or run it!

 

I suspect it is your RAM stick that is faulty. Once, I had a similar problem with my display. Maybe, you could post a photograph of the pattern with lines' you get on your screen.
And memtest86+ is a very good way of telling a bad RAM.

 

Hi

I have sorted it thanks. I took out the battery, unplugged the hard drive for a few minutes, reconnected and booted up. It worked - I have a windows screen! I went into device manager and disabled the VGA driver and the computer has been fine for 5 hours now. I downloaded and ran memtest and the RAM is fine.

Thanks for all the replies.

 

Great news!!

I'm going to get a laptop shortly, and since I have no experience with laptops, if I ever have your problem - I'll know what to try first!!:dancer

Isn't this a great forum?:-D

 

Sorry, my post was meant for a different post in another forum.:-o