During my Win XP boot I notice some issues. First post screen is clean - every post screen after that contains random characters and some smiley faces as well. During warm boots, often no video is displayed once Windows XP is ready to display the logon screen. But video is displayed during BIOS screens. I have tried scanning for virus with Norton and a few other programs. I think I have a memory resident virus or a boot sector virus. I have reloaded the machine and wiped the boot drive as well with the command, Format c: Should I have done Format c: /s ? What can be done to find the virus or correct this issue? If I power down the machine for about 10 minutes and then reboot I can get it back to normal. This also leads me to believe I have a memory resident virus.

Mem resident is the least likely. Boot sector is second runner-up. You can write a fresh MBR with: fdisk /mbr Since you're getting happy faces and erratic boots, a memory test would be a good idea. HTH M2