Won't boot. Vertical lines on monitor.
 

Had a Power outage. Toaster overloaded and flipped a breaker while I was on my computer Now when I power up, it shows the logo and displays uniform vertical lines on the monitor. What happened??? It used to be a Presario but replaced the mobo sometime about a year ago with a zotac board. Running XP home. Don't know where to start. Removed and replaced the battery, then stared at it for awhile. Checked all the connections. Did the magic 'disconnect the power cord and hold down the turn on button for ten seconds' trick which has worked miraculously on all boot up problems before. Can anyone give me a clue as what to do next? Have you any idea what it is like to be bedridden without a computer?

Won't boot. Vertical lines on monitor.
 

On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:27:33 +0000, Ron Jackson wrote:

Had a Power outage. Toaster overloaded and flipped a breaker while I
was on my computer Now when I power up, it shows the logo and displays
uniform vertical lines on the monitor. What happened??? It used to be a
Presario but replaced the mobo sometime about a year ago with a zotac
board. Running XP home. Don't know where to start. Removed and
replaced the battery, then stared at it for awhile. Checked all the
connections. Did the magic 'disconnect the power cord and hold down the
turn on button for ten seconds' trick which has worked miraculously on
all boot up problems before. Can anyone give me a clue as what to do
next? Have you any idea what it is like to be bedridden without a
computer?

The power surge could have corrupted a file or files on the hard drive or
blown hardware, possible the graphics card, or the monitor's been
damaged. It's hard to say.

What I suggest first is to boot with a bootable CD like a Windows install
CD or a Linux LiveCD to see if the system boots fully and the display
looks normal, and everything works. If everything looks fine, then the
problem is most likely corrupted files on the hard drive. If not, then
it's probably a hardware problem.

Get back here with what happened after trying the above.

Stef

Won't boot. Vertical lines on monitor.
 

Ron Jackson wrote:
Had a Power outage. Toaster overloaded and flipped a breaker while I
was on my computer Now when I power up, it shows the logo and
displays uniform vertical lines on the monitor. What happened??? It
used to be a Presario but replaced the mobo sometime about a year ago
with a zotac board. Running XP home. Don't know where to start.
Removed and replaced the battery, then stared at it for awhile.
Checked all the connections. Did the magic 'disconnect the power
cord and hold down the turn on button for ten seconds' trick which
has worked miraculously on all boot up problems before. Can anyone
give me a clue as what to do next? Have you any idea what it is like
to be bedridden without a computer?

Do you get beeps when you turn on the computer? If so, the mobo is
complaining about something and you need to count the beeps and look up the
beep code (one beep usually means POST is OK).

Does the computer do the POST (Power ON Self Test) ? If so, the motherboard
is probably OK.

Assuming the mobo is OK, can you boot from a bootable CD? Any bootable CD
is OK to try...Windows setup, Linux...whatever. Best to go into BIOS setup
and make the CD drive the first boot device though even if it is not that
way a CD should boot if the primary boot device doesn't (as long as the CD
drive is listed as a boot device).

If you can boot from the CD, it means that either the HD is toast or the OS
on it is. If you have another HD with an OS, you could try using it; if
not, you might try the XP repair console (on WinXP setup disc) and do FIXMBR
and FIXBOOT to repair boot info; if those don't help - or if you prefer -
you could try reinstalling Windows.

If the CD won't boot or if none of the last paragraph help, I would suspect
the power supply unit.

--

dadiOH
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