Don P wrote:

Suggestions are requested for cause and cure of boot problems on an
IBM/Lenovo M52, running Win7 (updated) with a ViewSonic ViewSonic 2033
LED monitor, beginning about two weeks after replacing a (clicky) drive
C: with a Samsung 860 EVO SSD (with no problems at cloning and
installation.)

At cold boot, the system hangs at "Starting Windows" with rows of
coloured stripes across the screen. These are nonuniform, i.e. appear
in any of three or four different patterns (just once with also the
four-colour flag, but Win7 failed to start. Switching on and off again
may or may not start Windows normally. I usually get there after three
to five restarts.

Sounds like a video monitor, card, or driver problem. Have you tried
booting Windows into its safe mode?

BEFORE Windows loads, you get a POST screen. That is the BIOS/UEFI
reporting what hardware was found in the computer, like CPU, RAM, and
drives. Do you see the POST screen okay?

When at the POST screen, if you get can see it, no driver has yet been
loaded by the OS which also means that driver's config cannot change the
resolution of the monitor (which the monitor may not support so you get
out-of-frequency-range shearing). First see if the video card and
monitor work okay by presenting the POST screen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-on_self-test

The POST screen should appear when the *hardware* has booted and is
presented before the hardware goes about trying to find an OS to load.
Some pre-built PCs have their BIOS configured to advertise the computer
maker, like pushing a fullscreen logo of "Dell" or some such brand. If
that's the case, it overlays the POST screen which means you may not see
some or all of the POST screen. However, even seeing that adware banner
screen (atop of or instead of the POST screen) means the video card and
monitor are working.

A further malfunction after successful boot was "USB unavailable" which
prevented USB mouse for about 20 sec. but corrected itself.

Disconnect *all* USB devices, including mouse and keyboard if they use
USB. Boot to see if you get into Windows (no idea if you configured
Win7 to show a login screen or to automatically login). You won't be
able to use the mouse or keyboard but the idea is to make sure no USB
devices are causing the problem. If you can boot that way into Windows,
try again but with the mouse and keyboard connected - and ONLY those
devices (all other USB devices are unplugged for this test).