Major problems--garbled output in BIOS???

[Peep]

I'm not sure where to post this. My desktop has been flaking out occasionally for a while and one of the main reasons I started using linux in the first place was trying to figure out a way to get it to behave.

 

Yesterday it locked up hard in KDE and the only way I could get it to reboot was to ssh in from another computer to reboot. On reboot the first stuff up on the screen was pretty corrupted-looking. You could still read the words, but about half the letters had been replaced with smiley faces and weird symbols. It proceeded to boot, but X wouldn't load. When I checked from the other computer, however, I was still able to ssh in and the underlying linux system seems ok (apache's running fine, etc)

 

1) Could this be a video card problem somehow? (Sounds unlikely, but who knows)

 

2) Could this be a linux problem? (Sounds unlikely, since it happens before the system even gets to the hard drive and it happens for both gentoo and mandrake)

 

3) Any ideas?

[Peep]

ok, after posting the above I went in with my digital camera and was going to take a picture of the gibberish on startup, but when I rebooted it worked just fine. I was able to start X and it looks normal.

 

This makes me think it's definitely not a BIOS type issue. I don't think it's a heat issue since the system is generally pretty cool and the air coming out the back fan is cool. I'd love anyone's ideas :)

[Ixthusdan]

The gibberish was left over in the video memory. It is a fairly normal thing, and I'm afraid is unrelated to your computer issue.