Graphics glitch or no signal while booting from win7 inst. disc (stock PC, brand new SSD)

[jonic9605]

Hi,

I am having some issues while trying to install Windows 7 on a brand new SSD on a stock PC. Got rid of the old HDD due to judging it being faulty.

Breakdown of whole process so far:
1) Receive stock Acer Aspire PC (manufactured ~2009 apparently) from grandmother. Said it will not boot.

2) Try it out - does boot, but takes over 30 minutes to move on from 'Loading Windows 7" to the desktop. Extremely slow to use. Opening a standard program takes a few minutes, and opening the start menu takes about a minute. Unusable in this state.

3) Suspect faulty HDD (raid0 configured WD 1 TB drive). Swap it in as a secondary drive to my own PC. Shows up normally. Try to run Malwarebytes standard scan, takes 6-8 hours (normally around 30 minutes). Let a boot-time Avast scan run for about 48h (of which 30h+ at 96% complete) before canceling it. Windows is not able to complete a defrag or chkdsk on the drive.

4) Judge HDD as faulty and bin it.

5) Buy a WD 120gb SSD drive and Windows 7 installation disc off ebay (same OS subversion as was installed on the faulty HDD, Home Premium 64bit). Plan is to install the same but fresh version of Windows with the same software key as was used before (sticker on PC tower side).

6) Connect SDD. Boot into bios and change SATA onboard controller mode from raid to AHCI. Set boot priority for DVD drive and pop Win7 installation disc in. Save and exit.

7) Boot proceeds normally up to a black screen with a single blinking text indicator at top left for at least several seconds but less than a minute. Then a screen appears reminding me of colourful 8-bit graphic blocks blinking twice per second between two phases like simple christmas lights. Picture attached.

At this point, video signal comes through the GPU in the PCI-E slot via DVI cable. Wouldn't assume the GPU to be faulty, since it booted to Windows (albeit extremely slowly) without display issues.

8) Switch video feed priority in bios from PCIE to onboard VGA. Connect onboard VGA to monitor.

This time the boot proceeds into the same black screen but instead of christmas lights next the monitor simply loses signal. (Cannot understand why - isn't onboard supposed to be a safe fallback output if all else fails?)

9) Switch video feed priority in bios back to PCI-E and connect monitor to GPU VGA port. Boot proceeds up to christmas lights.

I should note that the PC will not shut down by pressing and holding down the system power button once it gets to the christmas lights screen. Did not pay attention whether it did so after trying onboard VGA and losing signal. Would bet on it not powering down in that case either.

Any thoughts as to why this is happening or any suggestions for the next troubleshooting steps?

I am thinking of trying out the following after work:
-Test installation disc on my own PC (should have done already, I know)
-Remove CMOS battery from the mobo for 10 minutes
-Test RAM / Take out all but one RAM stick (currently 4x 2gb)
-Pray to Acer snd ask them to remove the curse set upon me for trying to tamper with a stock PC of theirs

Thanks in advance, starting to be at a loss here.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Bizarre screen. Your outline of approach is a good one. Can you locate a copy of the motherboard manual and confirm there is no need for special settings? Use a portable version of Ubuntu or your boot-time Avast to confirm system bootable. CMOS battery should be nearing end of life (but should not really cause this).

Since your lights are so special, I am wondering if something like a loose heatsink may be giving you a temperature issue.

Taking it out of case and doing a benchtop rebuild is a lot of effort, but may help you find the problem.

When you finally get it going, allow 2 days to get all the Windows 7 updates installed, restarted and running. Depending on planned use, you may want another OS.