Desktop running Win98SE. Everything fine until this morning when I cleaned the box as have done many times before by vacuuming the inlets and fan outlets. When started, everything was very slow, so ran antivirus, all OK, and three spyware programs that found just a couple problems which quarentened.
When turned on, got POST, then “Win loading” screen but then the screen turned into a bunch of weird vertical colored lines. Finally rebooted, same thing.
Opened box, everything seated OK, all cables connected and tight both inside and in back.
Nothing added or changed recently, but just can’t get into Windows. The monitor must be OK as it shows the Win loading screen OK.
I’m more inclined to think there’s a problem with the video card itself. GPU problems usually manifest themselves as graphical glitches – spots, lines, colour shifts or things like that if it’s still functional enough to display something. Has the video card’s fan been working okay? Is there adequate cooling in the case to allow for proper heat exhaust?
It has been my experience never to use a vaccum cleaner in or around a computer. Vaccum cleaners generate static electricity and you risk zapping components. While you may have been successful in the past, past luck does not guarantee future luck.
Always use one of those commercial cans of compressed air.
I pretty much decided that was it, so called a local repair shop, told them the symptoms, and they came up with the same idea.
I hope that is all it is…beats a bad HDD, but no symptoms suggesting that. Anyhoo, too busy right now to replace the card, so just dropped it off at a repair place. Keeping fingers crossed.
It wouldn’t surprise me. HDD problems will usually cause a variety of problems; not being detected at POST, the system not being able to find/read the bootsector, random errors during startup (halts, usually) or during normal operational use, problems writing, reading or storing cached information resulting in corrupted data, general data corruption, noises coming from the hard drive (clicking or scraping noises), etc.
I’ve replaced a few bad cards in people’s systems; one actually worked enough to function in Windows, including changing resolutions – as long as you didn’t mind dots and lines all over the screen. This is usually a sign of bad video RAM.