Laptop screen playing up

[lawrie29]

I have a HP laptop, and about an hour ago the screen went funny, loads of vertical stripes in funny colours as well as horizontal lines, like on a crt TV. I could not see anything on the screen and had to turn to lappy off to get it to work on the second time it did this, the first time a control,alt, delete fixed it.

Is this likely to be some kind of virus, or a hardware problem?

 

[neil_g]

Sounds like hardware or maybe a loose connection to the screen, if a reboot fixed it then you might be lucky and it's just a dodgy graphics driver

 

[lawrie29]

Thanks Neil, I was hoping it wasn't too serious.
I think the laptop needs a bit of a cleanup, was the in-laws old one, and we use it as a backup computer. I think it just needs a spruce up.