Computer not booting

[bargepole]

Fans working, drives appear to be working, the display just gets to first splash screen, (energy pollution preventer) which is corrupted, a bit like a negative of a piano keyboard.

No beeps from the computer, but don't think it beeped when it was working. Can't enter bios.

Tried pulling the ram an re-starting without any ram iand got seven second duration beeps so assume post is working. Tried different ram and still the same.

Anyone any ideas what is the most likely cause of this problem?

P4 2.8gzh XP sp3

[ChuckFickens]

Well my first thought would have been faulty RAM, but as you've changed that then obviously not

if it's a seperate video card then try reseating it.

If still no joy I'm guessing at a corrupt BIOS

Which If it is then not good I'm afraid! only way I've solved a corrupt BIOS in the past is physically changing the BIOS chip

[bargepole]

Tried re-seating video card but made no difference.

Problem first started about 1 month ago, and found if I re-seated the ram it cured the problem. However if I switched off the computer at the wall socket (after shutting down first of course), next time the computer was switched on the same problem occured and had to re-seat the ram.

I stopped switching the wall socket off.

However the problem has re-appeared today without the wall socket being switched off. Changing/re-seating ram makes no difference now.

I was wondering if psu possibly faulty.

Unbelievable, just pressed the button again and it's fired up ok and I've not done anything apart from write this message on my laptop.
Not confident problem won't reappear.