Yet another problem :(

[caLLous]

Any ideas?

It does this all through the post, columns of double 0's that corrupt any text in their path. Then the XP loading screens looks normal but once that's out the way, it crashes, the monitor loses signal and then it just sits there with this stupid smug grin.

 

[strangely brown]

Not got much idea I'm afraid - I really hope you haven't trashed your highpoint RAID settings (especially if you were RAID 0)...

Given that it actually tries to boot XP correctly, then perhaps the RAID is OK and you've just got a dodgy GFX card/RAM? Try re-seating those first.

Regards,
SB

 

[smurkin]

That looks nasty. I would guess its not the RAID tho. Feng shui your memory my good man . I'd reset the bios with the jumpers as well.

 

[SawTooTH]

Id reseat the hd connections, grfx card and RAM then try. The number of times this has solved start up problems you wouldnt believe.

 

[Honza]

Those 00 are writing all over the screen infinitely right?
Means boot sector of your hard drive has been screwed usually... I'd bet on some boot manager thingie... imo reinstall XP from boot CD and delete current primary partition - C drive and let Windows installer make it anew... in case it doesn't help, take your hard drive manufacturer utility, perform faulty drive checks etc.. in case your hdd is ok, undertake write-zeros-to-disk ... and after that reinstall your XP from XP bootable CD...

BTW what were you doing with the PC before it collabsed this way?

 

[SheepCow]

If it is a boot sector problem on the HDD (as Honza suggested), try getting to the XP recovery console and doing "fixmbr". That will fix the master boot record on the HDD.

 

[strangely brown]

Hi,

I don't think that the MBR on the hard disk is gone - Given that the zeroes appear during the BIOS screen display, but you still get the XP starting screen and it tries to boot X, this indicates that the MBR is fine, and it's read the bootsector OK. If the MBR was damaged, then you would just get a blank screen with a flashing cursor in the top left hand corner (I've had a few of these in my time!).

XP probably realises the graphics card is hosed when it tries and fails to set the screen resolution as part of the boot-up process, and promptly crashes/shutsdown.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that the RAM in the graphics card is dodgy, and this is causing the screen corruption.

Do you have a "spare" graphics card you could swap out and test?

Regards,
SB

 

[SheepCow]

Good point(s)

 

[Clown]

SB is Jonty!