I was given a semi decent laptop because it was "broke".

It's an Acer Aspire 5003, AMD Turion, still going for over £230 (2nd hand) so I'm keen to get it working even if I have to spend another 100 on it.

When I turn it on, it displays the Acer graphic, I can even install the initial part of XP (then it resets after 15 seconds and corrupts) and access the (f8) menu,but when it goes beyond that the screen is very corrupt.

It's in bits at the moment, normally I can fix pc's with eyes closed, but this is a laptop, I don't have the luxury of spare bits lying around as this is definitely hardware related.

So my question is, is it a screen problem or could it be something else that is causing it?
Yes the screen works initially, but isn't that just at a the most basic level?
can a laptop screen work at this level and still be broke when it goes to a different display mode?
Then again should it not go to the other part of XP where I enter serial etc?

It only has 256 meg of ram, could this happen if the ram was dodgy?

Like I said I don't mind spending some money on it, but I don't really want to spend money on speculative fixes and then find out it still not helping.

People down here want 60 quid to look at it but they offer no assurance of diagnosing the problem and still expect to be paid. But they did assure me that "Dave will do his best". idiots. Dave turned out to be a nerd I used to own at Killer Instinct in the arcade and failed a Hnc in computing so no thanks.

I'm thinking ram, mobo or screen, any informed opinions on what this can be please.