Video Card...or Monitor

Hey all,

This is more of a 'out of my curosity' type thing. i came back from my trip and one of my friend's had a problem with his laptop (I believe a Dell with WIndows Xp on it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any other specs nor check for them) in which at random times, the screen would go nuts and be mostly a light blue screen with some dark blue lines on it.

Now, I thought I'd go and restart it, only to find that once it was turned back on, the screen reappeared (so no chance to even see the set up screen).

According to my friend, it will do this randomly, and takes a while for it to revert (after powering down).

My guess is the video card...but wanted to pool your thoughts...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Sorry for the delay...was gone for ten days (again).

It happens randomly according to my friend. It happened when he was using Word to write something up. I was not there when it first occured, but he showed me his laptop that had the messed up screen after it happened.

I powered down his laptop and started it up again thinking I could get into DOS mode or whatever...only to...SURPRISE, find out the screen was EXACTLY the same as before.

I should mention (sorry) that this is for a LAPTOP.

(Could be worse I guess. Last summer a desktop computer I had got zapped by a thunderstorm. I went to start it up, and nothing happened. I pressed the button again and again, and FiNALLY it started up. I noticed immediately I had no Internet. Eventually, I turned it off...only to BOOM, have it start up again IMMEDIATELY. Amazing, it kept on going long enough for me to grab my stuff, but I had no luck getting the 'net to come back. Eventually, we found the motherboard to the culprit)

There's nowhere I can't reach.