Strange lines appearing during boot and lockups

Last night I purchased and built a new PC. Here are the specs:

Pentium 4 3.2Ghz FSB800
Abit IC7-MAX3 mobo
2x512MB Corsair Platinum series RAM
Gainward GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB VRAM
Plextor Plexwriter 40/12/40a
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Zs Platinum
WinXP Pro w/SP1a

I got everthing put together without much incident and managed to boot the system, load up drivers and even play a game for a bit. I shut it down to go have lunch and when I came back and rebooted, there were a series of two inch high vertical lines going across the screen during the POST display. Two sets of lines actually, one set across the upper part of the screen and one set on the lower. I tried a different monitor, different cable and different graphics card. Nothing seemed to help, and now my system is locking up on me while trying to boot into windows. At first the lines showing up and the lockups were random, but now they've become the rule rather than the exception. I don't have another P4 chipset mobo to test with nor do I have another processor that will work with that board.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I might try to resolve this problem without having to take it back where I bought it from, I would greatly appreciate it. I live out in the sticks and it's nearly a two hour drive to the shop I purchased these components from.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by bighoppa67 on 02/10/04 03:46 AM.</EM></FONT></P>