I have an Emachine desktop running XP that worked fine until one day the screen went black while the pc was still running. I needed to do a hard reset to shut it off. The problem got worse and worse (good thing I had an external HD that I was able to back up most of my files to), where the problem happened anywhere from 5-15 minutes after startup to not starting at all. I've tried booting in safe mode, but that doesn't work either. I've since bought a new pc, but I'd like to know what's up with the old one before I junk it or decide to fix it and sell it/give it away.

Thanks!

This could be anything - Do you ever get blue screens?

Have you done any overclocking (if you know how) or have you installed any new hardware/software lately?

You may have an overheating problem OR something is causing a electrical shortage on the MB.

Also, is it just the display that you loose and if so does the HDD sound as if its working hard at the time of switch off?

Nope, no blue screens, and I have not overclocked this machine. As far as new software, I don't believe that I installed anything new that would cause such a problem. The HD does not spin at all (or at least very little) when the screen goes black, though the HD stays on steady.

At this point, I am unable to tell if I have an overheating problem, since the system won't start up at all...even to do a system restore.

When you try power up, does anything switch on such as fans, etc?