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When I opened up my laptop after few days, I could see red vertical lines on my login window, and the PC hanged. I tried restarting and booting up many times but nothing helped.

I cleaned my laptop and tested the RAM and HDD. Both test were successful. The fan heated up too much, but is now clean, and hence the fan runs OK.

I then reformated my PC with an HP OEM CD (as I have an HP laptop). I restored it to the original factory settings.

The factory settings (restoration) completed OK. When the computer said "Preparing computer for your first use" again those red lines were still visible on those text.

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What model HP is it? – Joe Taylor Sep 4 '11 at 16:52
HP Model is: DV6-2000t – romilnagrani Sep 5 '11 at 9:40
It loks like there was a problem as indicated by this forum post: h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware/… Unfortunately the link is broken. – Joe Taylor Sep 5 '11 at 10:42
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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

It could be your GPU has been damaged by the excessive heat you mention. Vertical / Horizontal lines are a common sign of a failing GPU.
If your Laptop is in warranty I recommend speaking to your reseller and telling them the problem.
On a side note even if it is outside warranty it may be worth checking if it is a known problem with your Laptop as often manufacturers will replace these parts even outside their original warranty.

Another way to diagnose the problem as GPU related is to plug in an external monitor and see if you can reproduce the same error. If you do then it is most likely the GPU that is failing.

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My laptop is outside warranty.So you mean to say that HP guys would still replace the GPU Parts? – romilnagrani Sep 4 '11 at 13:58
They MIGHT replace certain parts that have been shown to fail more often than they reasonably should. I got the fan on my Sony laptop replaced this way. It's kind of like an auto recall. – DanH Sep 4 '11 at 14:20
If it was a known fault on the GPU then they may have extended the warranty to cover the GPU ONLY for a period of time (usually an extra year) A common one that I've encountered is the Nvidia chipset on Dell Latitude D620, 630 models. In this case Dell extended the warranty for an extra year on GPU failiures. – Joe Taylor Sep 4 '11 at 14:58
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up vote 0 down vote

To me this sounds like a problem in display circuitry, not graphics card. In laptop both are within the same enclosure, but artifacts like this would mean replacing the monitor on desktop. So most likely the only thing you can do is to prepare to replace the laptop.

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