Weird Lines all over my Computer Screen??

Question

Ok, my dad's computer suddenly started getting these weird grainy lines that appear around the screen. It all started when my sister turned on the computer. There was a screen of pink and green vertical lines all across the screen. We turned it off and turned it back on. The problem wasn't that bad, we could see the screen somewhat with stray lines,but I think my dad did a system restore because there was an old desktop background.

Is this a problem with the monitor? A virus or something?

It's now at the point where we can't use th computer AT ALL. The cursor is surrounded by a little box of line and the whole screen is covered by it!!

Answer 1

My (former) monitor used to pull the Vertical Stripe bs... (my comp is completely virus free, i can assure you) when i turned on the monitor.

Well, i can say it was because the monitor was a POS and was 10 years old.

good riddance.

Answer 2

sounds like a virus to me

Answer 3

No virus

the problem can be narrowed down to these

1. Monitor problem(as you said monitor iam assuming its a desktop)

check monitor; Remove VGA cable(blue in color) from the back of CPU/Chassis/box coming from the monitor. Power on the monitor and not the computer/cpu/chassis .  If monitor does not show any lines and says that cable not connected or shows some menu as no input then monitor is probably fine. Reattach VGA cable. Power  on the computer and press or tap F2/Del key to get in to BIOS settings. Once you have entered Bios check if you see any lines or colors if not monitor is fine.

2. video driver/card problem

Restart computer press/tap F8 key till you reach a screen that says safe mode, safe mode with networking etc on a black screen. Select Safe mode and hit enter. Dont worry if you see everthing is in enlarged form, it just means that your computer is running with  your mother board integrated video and not the add on video card itself.

do you see  lines now. No , your motherboard is fine, could be a problem with either video card drivers or video card

Reinstall video card driver. Control panel> system> select hardware tab>device manager> select your video card (display adapter) right click on it and install video card rivers.

Make sure if you do not have a video card, you have installed Video drivers for your motherboard from the CD that you got when you bought your computer. Dont tell me that you dint get it , everybody gets its and then they forget about it,

Remove video card Manually from CPU chassis and check if you still receive lines. if no, video card could have gone bad

3. motherboard(integrated video)  , very rare

If you see lines in BIOS or F8 screen then probably motherboard has gone bad.

4. no high voltage appliance near monitor(vacuum cleaner,hair blower etc)

You can  also check for monitor problems if you have an extra monitor or laptop, just connect VGA/DVI cable to laptop or extra monitor and check.

press Fn+f8 for laptop display

reply if any prob.