Hello all again, I've used this site before with great success and hope i can get the same great results again


My computer was working fine 4 hours ago. A 'widows update' kept spamming me to restart my computer, and about 6 of these warnings in I was finished doing what I was doing and so I did. When my PC came back on, at the Select User screen I pressed 'Turn off Computer' in the lower left corner and selected Stand By. The monitor powered off. I closed the monitor.

I remembered that I had forgotten to check my emails before leaving so I opened the notebook about 15 seconds later. Rather than having the monitor power on, the monitor stayed off. The "thinking" LED shaped like a cylinder that lights up when the CPU is active was blinking, as if things were proceeding normally (besides me seeing nothing).

I held down the power button and the PC powered off. I tried to start it up normally, the Dell screen loaded and the Windows XP screen loaded. The monitor powered off before I ever saw the Select User screen.

I started up in safe mode, and made it into safe mode perfectly. I saw the desktop/icons/etc.

I started up using Last Known Good Config. This option took me to the user selection screen, and I thought I was home free. Wrong. I clicked my name and the desktop appeared for a second, long enough for me to see my VirusScan software start up, then the monitor powered off. The CPU LED kept 'thinking'.

I called Dell, and after about an hour of near-suicide-inspiring conversation with a textbook reading "technician," I had run some hardware diagnostics (all clean) and installed new drivers for my video card. Since none of these textbook steps worked, I was told to reinstall my OS, a standard Dell tech support move.

I am running right now in VGA mode perfectly. If any of you have any ideas about how I can resolve this problem PLEASE! let me know! I will post whatever types of data you need. Thank you for your time + knowledge

Some background info that may be related - the connectors between my motherboard and my battery are broken, the battery indicator LED flashes orange. Since this problem started, however, the flashing has stopped. Maybe something else in the motherboard broke? It seems to be some type of software problem to me though since it is running perfectly in VGA right now...

Sorry to trouble anyone who was thinking about this but I reinstalled the drivers while in VGA mode and things seem to be working OK again, Ill be back if the problem reappears