Hello..
My problem is something I have never seen or heard of before. I was wondering if anyone has any idea what I can do to correct the issue.

Everytime I turn on my PC I get these colored bars filling the screen, kinda like a bar code of color. The screen blinks a few times then stops. In order to turn it off I have to hold the power button in. After numerous tries and sometimes doing a restart with a ctrl/alt-del it will boot up.

The thing is thats buging me is that it appears that xp is booting up but all I see if that barcode of color. I have an MSI motherboard with one of those light indicators if anything shows wrong and all the lights are green.
I tried a few different monitors so I know its the PC thats causing the problem. The video card is a Nvidia geforce4 ti4200. I am thinking it may be something I installed.

Oh this is a new format and I never used the vid card before either(ebay). After the format I had no problems restarting or shutting off the machine for about 8 hours after installation.

Thank you..

Hello and welcome to PCHF,

It sounds like the problem is either your video card or your monitor.

Does your system have an onboard video card, if so then remove the geforce card and try to boot with the onboard.

Alternatively try another video card in your system and see if it works.


If you get those strange colors from the moment you turn the PC on then it has nothing to do with anything you may have installed. That would only affect the system once you are in Windows XP.

As said above it could be a Graphics card problem.
From your description it sounds more like a monitor problem
So try you pc on another monitor and see what is defected.

if you get the colors immediatly after turning on you computer its a hardware issue, most likely the vid card since u tried other monitors.

ive had similar issues when the vid card is fried. did u get it new or used? from a reputable site or joe blow? if its never worked, its probably the vid card. some vid cards require additional power, via the same plug that a floppy drive uses, directly to the vid card, see if it has one, if its plugged in or not. has the heatsink been removed and reinstalled on the vid card? if done improperly it wont be as effective, causing the chip to overheat and burn out.

try reseating the vid card, or if you have onboard video, remove the card, disable the onboard in the bois, shutdown, install card and then power up.

Thanks for the advice. I'll try your suggestions and see if I can figure this out..