R32 - Defective Display

[ththeo]

I was given an older R32 which has the following problem:

On power up the display shows the IBM-Thinkpad logo clearly,
getting into the BIOS settings the screen is also clear;
however procceding to the XP boot screen it appears that a gnome,elf pixie or such like is sitting at the right end of the display and is pouring ink all over the screen which takes about 3-5 secs to turn completely black... and then nothing while the machine seems to be working fine. There is also no display on an external monitor (check cable indicaton on monitor).

This leads me to believe that something is awry with the VGA card but why would it display the logo and BIOS screens?

Comments and suggestions appreciated.
Theo