Screen flickers, pc restarts and doesn't boot!

[phantom555]

Hi,
I had a hp pavilion desktop pc bought in 2006. After its MB stopped working i had buyed a new MB of company Gigabyte- GA-965GM-S2. Installing a fresh copy of windowsXp pro, the pc was stable for some days, then it stopped booting! The Bios startup screen started to flicker and freeze. I somehow managed to again load a copy of winxp by formating my HD. But again the same problem persists. There are unusual symbols like ace, spade...etc appear at the startup Bios screen and the pc never boots!
Now where lies the problem-
1) Is my HD worn out cause its more than three year old?
2) Is it cause of some virus thats disabling the working of my HD and MB?
3) Is it cause of some unknown electrical interference perhaps from the UPS battery that is inhibiting the power supply and also the MB, thereby creating unusual symbols?
4) Or is the new MB not working properly and need to be replaced?
5) Or is the RAM not functioning properly?
Kindly advice?

----------------------
kunal khan

 

[Hefemeister]

I would start by reseating memory and graphics card if you have one.
Check all of your connections from your power supply.
Reset cmos.

Then test memory with memtest.
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

 

[Trotter]

Friggin' storm keeps erasing my replies...

Sounds like BIOS corruption to me. BIOS is what tells the mobo how to access the hard drive, so I doubt the hard drive is causing it.

I would flash the BIOS from a floppy and swap out the CMOS battery with one I knew to be good (r a new one). If that doesn't work, I would test my other components in a different computer to be sure, and then I would replace the mobo.