[ghost1986]

i am not quite sure how to articulate this. i think ill start with some background info on my desk top.

i have XP, the tower and power source is 3 years old and the HD is 4. the moniter is 4-5 years old.

everything below is about 2 years old

Sony Optiarc 18X DVD±R DVD Burner Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model AW-Q170A-B2 - OEM

PNY VCG68128XWB GeForce 6800 128MB 128-bit DDR PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - OEM

ASUS M2A-VM HDMI AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz Socket AM2 89W Dual-Core Processor Model ADA5200CSBOX

ok now i will try to articulate its back ground.

my old desk top was reformatted about 3 months ago when i was going to have my mother use it but instead she decided to buy a new computer. so from then to about 2 weeks ago it was sitting in the corner doing nothing. well 2 weeks ago my roommate offered to set it up for me have to have all my games back on it and i said ok. i handed it over to him and when i got it back the games were back on it and he said he over clocked it (i have no idea what that means). over the past 2 weeks it worked great and better than before actually up untill yesterday. yesterday i was playing COD4 when the game froze. i waited for it to unfreze but it never did so i restarted it. from me pressing the restart button untill it got to the desktop the screen had these very strange bars all over it that would change position. just these long stright white bars. i then shut it down for the night but today when i started it again the bars reappeard. i then tried to play hitman to see if it would freeze and it did and i continued the precess once more with eve. each time the start up screen (BIOS i think its called)
would have the bars and the desktop would be fine. the computer never did this before i orignally reformatted it so i fingured my roommate messed up somehow and a few hours ago i reformatted it again hoping to solve the problem. it dident. NOW when the computer starts the bars are still there but the desktop now has fine white horazontal lines running all accrost making it nearly impossiable to read.

any idea what could be wrong and what i can do?

i have my laptop for homework so i have no problem expiramenting with the desktop.

thank you.

[BigAlDoc]

It sounds like a failed monitor or graphics card to me. So, the easiest to check is to "borrow" another monitor to try. If the problem is still present, it looks like it'll need some inside "surgery" (possible replacement of graphics card).

[dlsayremn]

Overclocking is making changes to the processor and memory settings to make them run faster to improve overall computer performance.

The white lines generally would indicate a problem with the monitor or video card.
You could check the monitor by connecting it to your laptop.

[ghost1986]

well i hooked my monitor to the laptop and it worked just fine.

[dlsayremn]

Since the monitor works fine with the laptop, would suspect a problem with the video card.
Have you checked the Display Adapters in Device Manager to see if anything shows up there?

[ghost1986]

i think i will just have to buy a new card. the computer starts up with the bars still but once it gets past the windows screen the computer blacks out. thus i cant see the desk top. oh well. i still have my laptop for home work. when i go home for Christmas ill have my friend tell me what to buy. i will also never let me roommate touch any of my computers again.

thanks for trying to help.