video card gone bad is my guess
"ll" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,
I'm working on a Dell Pentium3 (800MHZ) which has run fine for the
past 3 yrs or so. I replaced the video card at that time (3 yrs ago),
as the old one had died.

About 2 weeks ago, the video display started having problems
(scrambled characters and 'nonsense characters' (wingdings, like
spade, etc) in varying colors where the startup video card info used
to just be white text on a black background, equally spaced vertical
lines in the Dell splash screen upon startup, what resembles 16 color
mode when Windows Desktop appears, 'paintbrush effect' when the cursor
is moved across the Desktop). It appeared to 'go away,' as the next
time it was started, the monitor was fine again (no lines or
anything).

Having thought it might be a virus, I was downloading McAfee last
night, when at the end of the long (for dial up) download process, the
screen went black, although the PC was still on (I had had the
computer on for approx an hour at that point). I turned the monitor
off and then back on again, and there was nothing. Upon restarting
the PC, the splash screen appeared with those same scrambled
characters and vertical lines once more, and the other previously
mentioned display 'distortions.'

This started occurring after visiting an ebay affiliate website, and
I'm wondering if this may be a virus of some sort?

Thanks for any help,
Louis