Hi Guys,

I have just joined this forum so I am a newbie to all of this so please bare with me on this. I am not sure iof this is a graphics or motherboard issue.

I have a very strange issue with a customer of mines PC, its a HP Pavilion Slimline s3150.uk. which will not boot.

When you turn on the machine for the first time you see the blue screen with HP plastered all over it with press F2 for bios etc. This screen has faint lines running from top to bottom which is a bit strange. The main issue is that after that screen (if you have the windows disc in the drive) you normally see......Press any key to boot from CD/DVD. This appears but with very random letters and fonts etc and every where else on that screen is exclamation marks!!!!!!

I have managed to boot from the disc and get to a certain point in the installation of windows vista. I get to the point very close to the end where you see the black screen "setting up the machine for the first time. with full stops going further and further to show progress then the screen goes blank.

When you re-boot you get the windows did not shut down properly screen with the option of safe mode or normally. Choose either and you just get a black screen.

I am stumped on this, can anybody help me? I woulod really appreciate it!

Thanks

have you checked the graphics card.... as far as i know these slimline desktops are delivered with the troublesome nvidia geforce 7500LE. Mine had all the same symptons and splash screens etc but I was able to boot it in safe mode. Once the OS loaded I simply disabled the device via device manager and let the onboard VGA (integrated graphics using Intel GMA 950) load on next bootup.

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