boot/bios screen filled with characters

realdan · 04-12-2007, 01:20 PM

I have a relative who is using an ancient system with the following specs
It is LG branded PC.
Motherboard is gigabyte 81845 gvm-rz (it is shown on the motherboard)

In short,
According to him, he has downloaded some songs and then windows xp crashes.
Now when the PC is started, in the boot screen which usually display cpu and ram info..the words are not displayed clearly and looks distorted and difficult to read
something about default cmos loaded.
below, there is f1 or f2(cant read clearly) to continue, del to enter bios and others...etc
when i press f1, it simply display a screen filled with exclamation mark (!) and a few other characters
Windows xp however failed to load and i get stuck at that screen

Even the bios setup screen is filled with all kinds of characters and cant read anything that is meaningful on screen..however actually it is working as i can naviigate using the arrow key and could save or exit the bios.

have checked 2 ddr400ram by inserting it one at a time..
have removed the cmos battery and then put it back after sometime
found the cmos clear and removed the connector or whatever it is called and then put it back
again found one with the BIOS something, removed it and then connect it back
still no progress

since i didnt test with a known working stick of memory..so the memory problem couldnt be ruled out yet.

but could it be a graphic related problem and it uses integrated graphics with no agp or pci slot in sight

or could it possibly be a bios corruption or other related stuff

i havent seen such a problem before so please enlighten me on the matter

thank you for reading this far