Computer freak out

Just saying good luck with resolving the problem, k.
(Obviously I'm in no position to assist. )

Thanks for the moral support!

Your techie may be correct. Starting in safemode may bypass the graphics card.
Reload/repair windows from the original disc

Egads! Not that!

It doesn't rule out the video card since safe mode uses standard VGA and not the normal video drivers.

I would try to uninstall the video drivers from safe mode and see if it starts ok after that.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292460

Of course you should make sure you have the drivers available to reinstall.

*edit* It looks like you might be able to disable the video driver using device manager

I disabled while in safe mode. How would I be prepared to reinstall on reboot (before I try to)?

If you only disable it, then you would just need to re-enable it later.

If you uninstall, then you would need to know where the drivers are to reinstall.

With it disabled, see if it will restart in normal mode. (The video may be 640x480 and 16 colors and look horrible.)

Is there a risk to disabling them?

I'll do it later, I finally have AVG running.

Not really. It might not start up and you will have to use safe mode, but that's what you have to do now.

The lack of video in normal mode points to either a corrupted driver or a bad card. The bad card is only bad in certain video modes if vga will still work. You might be able to use it in limited video modes.

Do you have another computer in the house, and can it burn CDs? If so, you could download the live CD of a Linux distribution, burn it to CD on that computer, and boot if from CD on your computer. (Because live CDs don't touch your hard disk, this would leave your Windows installation unchanged. Just shut down your computer, take the CD out, and you're back at square one.) Where you go from there would depend on the outcome of your experiment.

1) If your screen looks freaky after booting Linux, too, you have confirmed that the problem is with your graphics card. Then your techie-in-law is probably right and you need a new computer.

2) If your screen looks fine after booting Linux, you've got some problem with Windows. If you're lucky, some bug has caused your driver to misconfigure your graphics card, and Linux fixed it when it booted. (It happened to me sometimes.) If you're not-so-lucky, dadpad is right and you have to install Windows from scratch.

***

In case you want to go that route, the first Linux live CD I'd try is Ubuntu (download page here), the second is Fedora (download page here).

Whatever you try -- good luck!

Thanks Thomas. I won't get into it tonight - it's too late. And this week will be crazy. Can I run in safe mode for a while? It is slow and the graphics are too big, but it works.

Is it a big problem that my firewall (comodo) doesn't run in safe mode?

Re the disabling of the video driver. I think I might have the wrong thing. I can disable/enable the DVD-CDROM device - is that what you're saying I should do? I don't see any other video driver.

In my opinion, you can run it in safe mode for a while. There is a risk if your firewall is disabled, but it's limited because your anti-virus program is still running. And although safe mode disables your firewall, it also disables other programs that make your computer more vulnerable to any attack that gets through. If it was my computer, I would deem the risk acceptable for the rest of the week.

PS: If you don't mind, I'll just send you the CDs by snail mail. That way, all you have to do is pop them in, boot, and see what happens.

In Device Manager you should see "Display adapters". Click it to see the video card. Disable the driver for the video card.

Thomas, that's very kind!

Parados, I'll try that. Thanks.

How's it going, k?

Making any progress?

Well, the computer still limps along. After disabling the video driver last night, the computer wouldn't reboot in normal mode. Tonight I came home and forgot to hit the key to go into safe mode (is it F8 or F10?). It still didn't work in normal mode. So I rebooted and tapped both the F8 and F10 (I'm ridiculous, but this worked yesterday) to get into safe mode. It didn't go into safe mode, but it did boot up in normal mode. I was told it was recovering from a serious error, sent a message to windows and have been trying to get a window's update going (not much luck there for some reason).

I do have running AVG and firewall at the moment, which is good. But, the screen is still in large-print and I have to scroll around to see a whole post.

Thanks for asking! <grin> I'm going to keep tinkering....