Black Screen with Colored Blocks during boot

Well the first time this happened there was a black screen with a line of colored blocks with what looked like smiley faces in them. Today it happened again except there was the colored boxes with some type of weird symbol in them and white lines all over the screen. Windows continued to boot up normally and I haven't had any problems. I'm worried it might be a hardware problem. Help?

PS: This happens after post, right before the login screen

 

Hi MannyD.I had similar problem,whitch was happening occasionally on my D630.It was motherboard issue.When I switch it on,I had lines and letters or"smileys"on my screen and sometimes system freezed up.I fixed it by changing motherboard.I have dedicated video card NV135m ,so it was videoacrd,I think.

 

Do you have a picture so I can confirm that its the same thing? My computer has also been stuttering when on balanced or power saver mode if that helps at all.

 

It shouldn't be anything to worry abuot if your computer is operating normally in Windows.

This happens on my M1730 sometimes when loading Linux. All that is happening is the video card is temporarily switching back to 'DOS' (i.e., plain old text) mode but displaying a random bit of memory (interpreted as smileys!).

This old text mode is an age-old legacy feature which every PC video card has supported since the days before Pentiums, having more than 16MB RAM in a PC and even full-colour displays.

It could be a driver issue, but it's still no cause for alarm.

Check your system with memtest86 (or Windows own memory testing feature) and possibly SiSoft Sandra if you really want peace of mind.

 

Ok thanks for the reply. I now have pictures:

 

thats just weird. That doesnt look like dos. ......if you want to see what dos is just run cmd. start-run-cmd-enter.......dos is all text. (as far as i know anyway) and this is not dos

 

Bump because I'm still having the same problem

 

What's your OS, Vista?
Click Start and on the search bar type 'msconfig' without the quotes.

Look under 'boot', 'startup', and 'services' for anything that looks suspicious(like having smileys or some weird code). Just don't go crazy and disable everything, use google if you see suspicious programs and want to disable/delete them..

Then run a good anti spyware tool, looks like someone gained access to your computer.

 

Nothing suspicious, all legit startup processes. I have run anti spyware (Adaware and spybot).

 

I have the same problem now on my M1530 I will call Dell in the morning.

 

I called Dell and they will be replacing my motherboard.

 

How did they determine it was the motherboard?

 

More like the gpu, but the gpu and motherboard are integrated. They have a system that tells a recommendation on what to send.