Ok, I've got a real problem and I really dunno what to do about it. I built a computer for my friend two years ago. Really sweet machine and he has never had a problem. He decided to remove the antivirus (dumb I know) and still hadn't had a problem.

So a couple of weeks ago he calls me up and says Windows won't boot up I think I have a virus. So I head over and take a look at his computer. What I find is something I've never seen before. The computer would boot to the selection screen (safe mode, safe mode with networking, etc), but everything is misspelled. R's replace letters, sections are blinking.

I booted it up with BartPE and ran spybot. Found some trojans and what not and wiped them from the drive. Restarted the computer and all the writing was correct. Said boot windows normally and it came up just fine. So I assumed all is well and went on my my.

Now three weeks later he is having the same problem. This time no spyware is found and not viruses are being detected. So I put in his XP disc and do a quick format and begin to reinstall it. Reinstall takes place and it pops up with the same problem. Misspelling, R's replacing normal letters, things blinking. So I unplug the hard drive, boot it up, and there are still misspellings. I reflashed the bios and that did nothing.

Any ideas on what I need to fix it? Or at least any ideas on what it could be?

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Your most obvious choices are, in order of importance:

1. Video adapter is failing or overheating. (may or may not have shown in the PE disk)
2. Your "friend" needs to have his computer taken away.
3. Corrupted FS on the hard disk. Solution: fdisk and remove ALL partitions, reboot, fdisk, create partitions, fdisk mbr. (can be done through recovery console off the XP cd. though the fixmbr command is not quite the same as fdisk)
4. Memory (though the changes would have shown up when you used your PE disk as well.)
4. Turn off bios shadowing.
5. Failing or corrupted CPU instructions (caused by heat, power fluctions, virus, stupidity, etc..)


These solutions take into account a couple of basic assumptions from your tale:

That you don't see this in the bios
That the PE disk didn't have the same problem.
That it really really matters

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I'm in agreement with ELJ on this one... He's pretty much listed them in order of likelihood as well - his Kung-fu is mighty strong.

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*bows to elj's kung-fu* ah master!

So I headed over today and was going to pop out the graphics card and use the on-board. But much to my surprise there was no on-board video! So I tried wiping the drive again and then reinstalling. Middle of the install video goes off.

I then popped the case pulled the card and everything looked pretty good. So I put the card back and then plugged in the power supply. Turned it on and *bam* fan on the card is not running. Ran got a new card and hello we're in business. Thanks for the help!

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