Unusual text during boot up

[Hodsocks]

I have an old Compaq desktop running Windows XP and its not booting up, when it gets to the options screen......Safe mode...safe mode with networking etc. the text is complete nonsense. The layout is the same but the language is gobbledegook, a very small percentage is recognisable as English but most is nonsense and whatever option you choose it just goes round in circles. Vey occasionally it come up in normal English and then it will boot into windows. Once in windows it will work for a while and then reboot and then we're back to the nonsense text. I have tried memory/ hard drive/ virus scans from a cd but again the text is gobbledegook. and they won't run, which has thrown me because I assume they are reading the text off the cd rather than the hard drive.
Has anyone come up against this before and is there a resolution? I am thinking of a reformat and reload, assuming it will run OK.

 

[Tmagic650]

This is a video/memory issue. An OS re-install might make things a bit clearer as far as any hardware issues are concerned

 

[cliffordcooley]

Re-seat your memory modules and if you have a graphics card do it as well. I've seen this behavior before. It usually means there is either bad components in your system or they are having issues communicating with each other. By disconnecting a few components and re-connecting them, you may be able to correct the communication issue.

 

[Hodsocks]

Thanks you guys, you were spot on, when I opened up the case one of the memory modules was poorly fitted, once snapped into place everything is now working OK. Job well done!!