I have a Toshiba laptop and I am not sure what is going on with it. Thinking that maybe the computer was corrupted 20 plus years ago. Trying to fix it up.
When the laptop boots, I can see this on the screen:
About 20 to 30 seconds later, the command disappears and I get a blank screen. If I blindly play around with Backspace, Enter, and other keys, I can actually get it to start (the Windows 98 startup chime can be heard) and it acts like I am on the desktop, but I cannot see anything. Also notice the funny looking characters: where the colon should be, there is an arrow... It is like this on other screens as well, with double exclamation points replacing characters and so forth. I know the screen works because it displays the initial toshiba message and I was able to see a BIOS menu (once). Have not been able to get there again.
I am able to press and hold F8 to go into Safe Mode successfully, but not sure what to do in Safe Mode. I tried refreshing various displays, but have not had any luck. I also tried installing the hard drive in another computer and booting it there: I did not get the full desktop (it asked me to install drivers for new hardware first), but the funny fonts were gone and it showed standard characters.
Wondering if the operating system is corrupted. Do I need to reinstall the OS? Can I bypass the command? If anyone has experienced this weirdness before, I would appreciate advice on what to do to actually be able to use the laptop normally. Thanks in advance.