What do you make of this?

rageofanath

New Member
My roommate brought up a friends computer, because she had a problem and knew I was "good with computers". However, I didn't even know where to begin on this. The screen looked like this:

fcomputerer5.jpg


fcpu2ja1.jpg


The lines would contort and change color, phasing in and out and in multiple directions.

Her computer is a Dell running Windows XP I believe (though maybe Vista, I'm not positive as she was here for about 2 minutes). She says she left the room for a few minutes and came back to this.

So far our theories have been:
1. Someone ran a magnet across the screen while she was gone.
2. Virus
3. Someone dropped it and didn't tell her.
4. Hacked

Maybe someone here could shed some light on this strange issue or confirm one of our speculations?
 
Last edited:
Not positive, as she was here for 2 minutes but I believe (99.99999999% certainty) it was LCD.

Oh, its a laptop, by the way, in case the pictures don't show it well.
 
Reload the driver for the video / graphics card.

Then come back and let us know what happens :D
 
When you start it up is it that way through the bios screen or just when it boots into windows?

this part is extremely important to know. If its fine in the BIOS and screws up in windows, that could mean there is a problem.


I just noticed how retarded my last statement was.
 
Call Dell support...

You'll be in for a 5 hour long talk with someone who dosn't know English, lol, but they might be able to help ya out more so.
 
nvm, it happens when hes in Windows, im pretty sure. I say this because the first and second, more prnounced in the second, picture it looks like a windows dialog box in the bottom left corner.

nvm, right corner, my bad
 
Honestly there is little I can actually do and investigate about the problem as I don't know the girl who owns this computer beyond the two minutes she was in here, and she more or less just showed it to me and left. I was very interested in the speculations here more to see if there was some "common" problem this was a symptom of that I was just missing.

As far as in or out of windows; she said she had the computer on and running, left the room, and came back to it, so it presumably was still IN windows when she came back as well. I asked her to restart to see if it came up then and she said OK and just... left... I don't know if I'll get to follow up on this unfortunately.
 
actually, i had a laptop several years ago that did that, and i plugged in an external monitor and it worked fine, lol. Try that
 
If it doing it in the bios when first booted before windows boots its probably messed up onboard video or the LCD has gone out, unless theres been some kind of messed up connection between the base and the LCD
 
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