IBM Laptop A31 2652 Garbled video even at initial boot screen

I believe this is happening cause the ram memory is either damaged or not well inserted in slots.. Open the ram memory compartment and remove them all and insert them back one by one and try to boot up with which one at the time .. This way you will see if any of them is damaged cause will do the same or will not boot at all ..
let me know what you've managed to do ..and how it behaved after checking the ram memory ..

Well, first of all XP is not the latest supported operating system from Microsoft.

That being said, I have not had a garbled screen followed by an error message 'setup didn't find any hard disk drive installed' on a laptop, in my limited experience with laptops (i.e. Acer One, Acer Aspire, Sony Vaio, etc.)

If you have an unexpected garbled screen it points to the pc board or mother board or the video card, but more likely the motherboard.

And, if you couple this with the hard disk drive not being detected, it reminds me of a situation where I had a no hard disk drive detected on a SCSI drive connected to my Windows 95 computer in the 1990s when I had heat related issues with the circuitry on the hard drive getting burnt out capacitors.

If the drive is not recognized, it might mean the boot sector is wiped, and essentially it needs to be reformatted and the operating system needs to be reinstalled (which you evidently tried to do).

To my memory, I never had this problem on Windows XP with a laptop, so I am thinking it's not Windows that is at fault, but the physical hardware is giving you problems.

If you boot from the CD for Windows XP and it doesn't find the drive, it's a big problem for this laptop.

I wish you luck in finding an answer to that one, seeing that it's out of warranty and XP is no longer supported by Microsoft.com.

It appears that your inverter may be failing, especially if there is a garbled picture and red tint upon initial boot. Buy a new or used inverter on ebay and swap it out yourself.

Sounds like the lcd is toast.

Hook the laptop up to an external monitor and see if you get normal video. If you do, chances are it's the lcd. You'll have to replace it.

Boot with an external bootable live operating system cd/dvd (preferably any of the live linux distros) if the audio works, then it is not a hardware issue. just search for the right drivers or worst case scenario format and re-install windows. if you still hear garbled audio, it is a hardware issue.

This is very possibly a hardware problem, namely a crack in the motherboard. Sorry, no easy or cheap fix for it if that's the case.

update monitor driver
your screen may be going
how old is the system

it is most likely the display chip on the motherboard

If you have access to an external monitor, connect it to the laptop. If everything works properly, then the screen or inverter has gone out. If you get the same garbled screen, then the video card has gone out.

If you are getting garbage on the screen before windows tries to load the laptop probably has a bad motherboard.

It's possibly only the video output is going bad on it, try hooking it to an external monitor and see if you get the same weird stuff on that screen.

Good luck, let me know how it goes