Weirdest bug I've seen

Maybe I'm looking at a virus, which is why it's so weird to me.

There's a machine here that, starting last night, wouldn't output anything to the screen. It looked like the monitor just wasn't getting a signal, as the power LED on the LCD monitor was orange. However, it was possible to remotely connect to this machine, though it looked...funny. The video card drivers were reinstalled and a few diagnostics were run.

Now, when we start up, everything in the POST and boot process as a whole is just plain weird. It's like a normal boot, but every single character has been replaced by another seemingly random character. This includes alphanumeric characters and punctuation, but also special characters like ace cards, smiley faces, and hearts. It's like the ASCII set has reeeeally gotten screwed up. Even the progress bar for loading Windows (before the logo screen), has replaced bars.

Then when we get in, remote only, everything is really slow. REALLY slow.

Any ideas what that initial weirdness is about?

ps-I promise this will be my last request for a while

Quote:
Now, when we start up, everything in the POST and boot process as a whole is just plain weird. It's like a normal boot, but every single character has been replaced by another seemingly random character. This includes alphanumeric characters and punctuation, but also special characters like ace cards, smiley faces, and hearts. It's like the ASCII set has reeeeally gotten screwed up.

Last time I saw that it was a fried vid card.