acer aspire 3000 video smearing

[bodeman71]

I'm troubleshooting a laptop for a friend of mine. He complained that it had been freezing and wanted me to do a complete reload of the OS (win xp home acer). The trouble is that im sensing that it is more of a hardware issue, the recovery cd (which acer uses to reinstall xp) froze 1/10 of the way through install. The strange thig is that upon freezing, the display seemed to be smeared which it did as well at the next reboot at the video mem display readout. (picture attached)
I was hoping someone would be able to provide some feedback to if its a hardware issue and what piece of hardware might be the culprit.



Thank you for your time

-Ed

 

[SYL\X/3K]

Could be variety of thing causing this issue, first i would look at the CMOS battery and see if its alive, my other thought would be failing BIOS

Try plugging in a monitor and see it the graphics is the problem or the screen

 

[saladfork]

Oh my... I'm using the same type of laptop right now... hope that doesnt happen to mine X]

 

[Alvin.C]

Hello,

Is this a newly purchased laptop?

 

[bodeman71]

Sorry about the delay,

I tried connecting an external display and i still get the smearing. The cmos battery is in good shape. The smearing also occurs in winxp if it is able to load that far, as the comp freezes upon the smearing. The machine is from 2005.