[jessechenven]

I'm trying to trouble shoot an older computer I inherited. I am completely new to PCs. At any rate it has two problems that are possibly relateed.
1. The image the monitor (I have tried 2 different working monitors) has a bunch of red (sometimes grey) vertical lines across the screen which distort the image.
2. Bigger concern is that it will not boot properly. It gives me the page with the option to boot in safe mode, but if I select it it just reboots to DOS. I have tried rebooting from an original xp disk, but it took forever (many hours), and then when it was finished and rebooting (where it eventually gives you the setup page) it wouldn't boot.

I've tried replacing ram and using a different hard drive, but no luck. At first I thought it was something to do with the video card, because of the image problem, but that wouldn't explain the inability to boot would it? Anything else you can recommend?

I got this computer from my father who said it just stopped working one day.

[donf]

Dah,

"Just stopped working one day?" Thank your dad on my behalf for sticking you with a challenge that will keep you up nights. :)

The video chip is probably toast, that's why you get image problems.

If you swapped in a new hard drive, then the PC should have taken the persona of the operating system on that disk. If it did not, then the drive controller may be toast as well.

Ask your dad if there were any electrical storms in the proximity when the PC went toes up.

Normally chip failures are caused by something extreme. To have two chips on the same motherboard puts the board at the top of my suspicion list. However, before you pull the board some basic safety precautions.

First: Never stick your hands inside the PC to change anything without disconnecting main power AND getting a ground strap on your wrist and connected to the Frame of the PC. Static discharge from you hands can really trash your system if discharged into the cards.

Second: If you have a digital camera, photograph the entire contents of the PC's cabinet.

This way you have a record of what goes where. Next check the back of the PC. Do you see two different video ports? One on a standalone card and on on the edge of the mother board. If you do, remove the video card, and connect the monitor to the mother board to see if you can circle around the display's problem.

Boot to Safe Mode and see what your display looks like, then get back to me here, please.

[jessechenven]

Thanks for your response. I believe there is only the video card that comes out, as there is no video VGA output on the mainboard. FYI this is a no-brand computer that was put together locally and purchased from a local store (not a name brand unit.) It has an AMD AthlonXP 1800+ processor. Here is a little more on what I did:
-The first time I turned it on it when through the regular boot until it got to the Windows XP startup page (black with "WindowsXP" and a little progress bar). It would get stuck with the progress bar going very slow and sit there.
-So I first tried to reinstall XP (and a reformatting of the drive). When I did it went through the DOS part fine (except that the monitor was difficult to read, so I had to rely on screen shots from a website of what I was looking at.) But when I it got to the part where the screen is blue (product key, installing network, etc.) it became REALLY slow. It took hours to go from 30 minutes left until 25 minutes left. When it finally got to 19 minutes (6+ hours later) it finally started installing at normal speed. This is what originally made me think there was something wrong with the RAM. When it finally finished and rebooted it did the same thing as when I first started it. So, I thought maybe there was something wrong with the HD. But when I put in a drive from another PIII computer (with XP installed), it wouldn't go past the DOS part of the boot.

At any rate, I thought it was weird to have the video issue AND the problem booting/installing. No electrical storms at the time of failure, and the computer next to it was/is fine. I was thinking of trying a new video card, but I'm not sure what to get and don't really want to spend much money (especially if that isn't the problem). The only markings on the card is AMIC A276308A-70, which I guess is an AGP card?
AND, to answer your question, it won't boot into safe mode. Either it does the same thing when it gets to the Windows XP page or it will just keep rebooting the DOS part.
Thanks