Bios appears in code

[annakiss]

Our PC won't start up. BIOS appears in a jumble of code like this:

http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu143/flaurena/IMG_5248.jpg

My partner is more PC-savvy than I am - but we're basically clueless as to what the problem is.

Does this look like a corrupt BIOS, fried motherboard, some sort of virus, or something else entirely? And do you think that our hard-drives (three separate ones) will be !@#$ed as well?

We're running Windows XP and PC is 5-6 years old. Home brew PC, so I think MB is Gigabyte K8 Triton nForce4SLI Series (GA-K8N-SLI) supporting an AMD Athlon 64 Processor.

Thanks!

 

[annakiss]

P.S. we already took the round battery out, but it didn't do anything.

 

[ko888]

I've encountered something like this before. The garbled graphics point to a problem with the video card or PCI Express slot or maybe even the power supply unit.

Try re-seating the video card by uninstalling it from the PCI Express slot and then re-inserting it, to see if that solves the problem.

If re-seating the video card doesn't solve the problem then try a new/different video card.

If the problem still occurs with a new/different video card then it could be a power supply problem.

Hard disk drives shouldn't have been affected.

 

[mavroxur]

Random characters, combined with the random artifacts, looks like a bad video card in my opinion. Hard drives should be just fine. Might reseat the video card or try swapping it with a different one first.

 

[annakiss]

Thank you both for such informative and prompt answers. Your help led us to the conclusion that the fan on the graphics card stopped working, so spot on! (And what a relief to know that HDs are ok!)

Thanks again!

 

[annakiss]

Best answer selected by annakiss.