need help with friends pc

My friend asked me to look at her pc for her and i dont know where to start. It powers on fine, goes to the windows xp welcome screen, then its all downhill from there. The screen just turns all weird looking. I can see a mouse cursor but cant move it. Ive tried diffent types of mice, so its not that (not that i thought it was). Ive tried safe mode, vga mode, and the like but none of that worked either. Like i said, the screen turns into weird looking colors and ive already tried 3 diffenrt monitors so thats not that problem either. She also cant find her restore disk. The funny thing is that the screen saver works and it is clear as a bell. Im lost here guys and need help. Also if it helps, it is a dell dimension 5100 with windows xp media center edition.need help with friends pc
Sounds like a graphical issue. Does the keyboard work? I would try a spare video card if you have one and see if that resolves the issue. If you can attempt to reinstall the drivers, that would be good. Otherwise, you may have to try a reformat.need help with friends pc
Ive also tried a different graphics card. The keyboard works in bios but i cant get it to do anything in windows. Even when i hit ctrl+alt+del, it still does nothing. It just goes to hell after the windows welcome screen.
Sounds like the OS is what we call in the business ''****ed''. It could also be a driver issue but either way unless you want to take many hours fixing it, and you'll have to do this by using her drive as a data drive on another PC, then i think your best option is a wipe and reload. If it's a virus or malware then it's got far too far into the system for a scan to do any good.



I suspect you'll to find a downloadable .iso for that restore disk.
[QUOTE=''hlcsbaby'']Ive also tried a different graphics card. The keyboard works in bios but i cant get it to do anything in windows. Even when i hit ctrl+alt+del, it still does nothing. It just goes to hell after the windows welcome screen. [/QUOTE]



Can you give me a pic of what the desktop looks like and the weird colors that you are mentioning? I'll try to help you as best I can.