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