Hello,

I have a dell dimension 8300 desktop computer and this morning, after my sister had installed quicktime, strange vertical lines appeared on the screen (see screenshot):
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i2...r666/weird.jpg

anyway, my sister uninstalled quicktime but the lines still remained. I attempted a system restore to before quicktime was installed - no joy. I then took the computer even further back to an earlier restore point, and again, no joy.

I have scanned for viruses and nothing. I thought maybe there was something wrong with the video card, but I tried to look in device manager and don't actually know which the video card is. This shouldn't have happened because this is a new hard drive we've only just had installed after the old one "went bad" so the all-knowing dell experts told us over the phone.

If anybody could help at all with this I'd be very grateful. If a hijackthis log is needed I can post one (haven't installed hijackthis yet on this new hard drive).

Thanks

In Device Manager your Graphics Card is listed under Display adapters.

I do not see anything wrong with your screen shot

Uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers is always an option.

To do this go to the manufacturer's web site and find the proper driver.

Do not update Graphics drivers Via Windows Update or the Device Manager.

Hey,

Thanks for the speedy reply. You really can't see the vertical lines on the icons on the desktop, etc?
I may take a look at the drivers...not really sure what I'm doing though...is there anything else that anybody could tell me about this?
Any help is appreciated muchly.

Thanks!

Tweak UI has an option to "Rebuild Icons".

You might want to download that if you don't already have it, and try the rebuild icons option and see if that helps.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p.../powertoys.asp

If that doesn't work try start Run... sfc /scannow

You will need your XP CD to insert when prompted.

Hey

Thanks for the reply jephree...tried tweak ui and it made the icons worse! They now look completely corrupted. It isn't jus the desktop icons though. The mouse pointer has little lines attached to it too. The start menu button has a few as well.

So moved on to your option B and waited ages for the scan to complete and when it finally had it gave me no feedback...just disappeared! So I have no idea what that was all about... it's driving me insane!

I don't know what else to do and I'd rather not mess around with drivers if I don't know what I'm doing...unless you could maybe point me in the right direction? Under sound, video and game controllers in the device manager (which I'm guessing is where the graphics card is...but please tell me if it's not...) I have:

audio codecs
legacy audio drivers
legacy video capture devices
media control devices
soundMAX integrated digital audio
unimodem half-duplex audio device
video codecs

...which means nothing to me whatsoever. I don't even know which of these is the graphics card or anything so I don't know which I'd need to update the drivers for! That's how much I know!

Thanks for your help so far! It is appreciated.

sfc /scannow is System File Checker

It scans all the System files and replaces any damaged or missing files from the CD to the hard drive. It makes no report. It just starts and ends (after some time as you found out).

Your Graphics Card and or Device is listed in the Device Manager under Display adapters.

I don't see how the graphics driver would affect only this particular issue. In general they would cover all aspects of your screen.

I would suspect that this is an XP issue.


All that being said:

Since this is a new problem try a System Restore to a point prior to the problem:

start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore


Another check point: Does the problem vanish in Safe Mode?

Try booting into Safe Mode options:

After the power-on and BIOS POST or your Logo screen repeatedly tap the F8 key or hold the Ctrl key before Windows starts.

Choose Safe Mode with Networking.


Also do you have another account to log in to? This will test if only this particular account is corrupted.

If this is XP Home version there is an Administrator account only available via Safe Mode that should be in its' original condition. Log into that and see if the problem persists. If you never set a Password on this account just leave the password box blank and hit Enter.

Hey,

Tried out what you said. With regards to system restore, I tried that right at the start. Though I suppose I could do it again but take it back even earlier? Though not sure if it's too late now...and I can't remember the date of when this happened...

An interesting point though is that as far as I can tell the problem does in fact vanish in safe mode. Though safe mode has a different screen resolution...dont know if its the old 800 x 600 thing or something, I didn't look, I just noticed everything was bigger and I wasn't sure if that had anything to do with it because usually my desktop resolution is 1280 x 800 or something like that.

Yes I do have another account to log into. We have 4 accounts in total and all are the same. I don't know if any of this info sheds any more light on the problem?

Thanks for your continued help

Safe Mode only loads the basic necessary drivers and services to boot XP.

It uses the Microsoft VGA drivers therefore not loading your graphics card drivers.

That is why the resolution change but it also points to corruption with your Graphics Card drivers.

Were you able to find a Display adapter listed under Device Management?

I would suggest un-installing the re-installing your Graphics Drivers but you need to ID your device (card). The manufacturer's web site will have the latest drivers and installation instructions.