Hey, I encountered a problem I've never seen before I wanted your guys advice. I have a Compraq Presario V5000 laptop that's probably four or five years old. I got it super cheap, and it serves my purposes fine. However, I was using it like normal on my lap and then the screen turns into gibberish. The pattern looks like bright ugly plaid. I have to do a hard reset, but then the computer screen turns black when Windows starts to load.

I set it down, quietly panic, then pick it up again. Then it boots up to Windows fine... until I bump it. Long story short, it's not the software, it's not the display connection, and I am pretty sure it's not the hard drive. However, when I bump the bottom of my laptop the screen goes crazy (usually looks like colorful stripes), and I have to hard reset. If I keep the laptop completely still it works fine. I've backed up everything already, so no worries there.

Obviously it's hardware, but I'm not sure what would cause such crazy graphical effects. Motherboard? Ram? Something I noticed is that the screws that keep the bottom enclosure tightened have fallen out... 6 out of 10 actually. Would those screws, uh, screw up the motherboard? I just bought replacement screws, so maybe that will fix this, but there's probably something loose inside. Any ideas?

I would just probably take it apart and check all connections and look for any damage like liquid spills or something, clean it up and carefully put it back together then see what happens.

That is odd... I think zanardi gave the best advice possible. Take it apart and try to solve it before you end up frying something and losing data. At least at this point, the hard drive is still working so you won't lose anything if you kill the machine trying to fix it.

Does the screen change if you bump it again?

Sounds like the GPU going bad/poor connection on the board.

Take the whole laptop, including components, apart. And then bump every circuit board until you found the one that causes the graphical effects.

The screen doesn't change again when I bump it. I think the screwed up screen is just a side effect of a more serious internal error. Probably some connection on the motherboard has loosened due to my missing screws. When I put slight pressure by warping the bottom of the laptop, it does it without exception.

I'll open it up tonight if I get some time.

backup now

Possibly a bad flex cable, definitely try to open the case up and check all the connections to make sure they're solid. I had a problem like that on my old dell laptop, it was the screen that needed replaced, took all of $160 on ebay to get a new one and replace it myself.

Delete all backups and take your laptop offroading.