Boyfriend's computer is fucked up.....
First, his external hard drive took a dump last week. Took it to the local data recovery place; they agreed to recover the data and transfer it to a new external hard drive which he supplied for them.
He's been transferring files to the new external hard drive all afternoon. Says he finished a few hours ago, but the new hard drive was still hooked up the computer.
Then he got the Blue Screen of Death. So far as I know, he rebooted and things were working fine.
Then later I come downstairs, and he's very unhappy. I ask what's wrong, and he says "Go start up my computer and see." What happens is that the computer goes to the start-up menu, but it's all fragmented-- the words are chopped in half and repeated all over the screen. If you tell the computer to go through its normal start-up process, what you see is the start-up loading screen splattered all over the place.
I unplug the external hard drive from the computer, make sure nothing else is attached to it except the mouse and power cord, and restart it. Same thing happens. No "safe mode" is offered. No error messages are given. The end of my very limited trouble-shooting ability has been reached.
Any ideas?