Hi all. You can skip to the second paragraph to read about my problem, but some background info might help. Thanks in advance for your advice on this!
Someone donated a 3 year old low-end custom built computer to my office a few months ago. We use it only occasionally and only for an hour or so at a time usually. It used to beep a lot during start up and then started beeping periodically when it was on for a little while. I had our tech guy look at it, and he disconnected the temperature monitor on the graphics card because he said it was too sensitive and that's what was causing the beeping noise. He also recommended that I get a fan for the graphics card because there was just a duct by it. He didn't make it sound urgent that I get the fan, and I hadn't gone around to it yet.
Then one day I left the computer on for about 5 hours. It had been working fine while I used it when I first turned it on, and when I went back to it 4 or 5 hours later I thought it was just in sleep mode or something. But I couldn't get it to refresh and ultimately had to turn it off with the power button. When I went to turn it on again, I got this screen with jumbled text asking me if I want to start in safe mode:
I can't select an option, but if I hit enter it eventually goes to the Windows screen, but the colors aren't right and there are funny lines in the background like this:
After that screen it goes dark and nothing else happens. This happens every time I try to start it up now. Did I fry the graphics card? Did something else get corrupted? I think everything is integrated, so I can't just replace the graphics card even if that is the problem. Any suggestions for what to try?
Our tech guy isn't that great and I don't think my boss would want to call him in to work on an old donated computer that might not even be fixable, but I would really like to get the computer working again if possible.
Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance...
Deborah