See if you guys/gals have a good grasp on what could be the problem.

Came home and noticed my monitor was in sleep mode- i dont use power saving options since i've had bad experience in the past with it and the PC in this house is mulit user and doesnt sit in sleep much anyway. Anyways i knew i had a problem at this point. PC wouldnt wake up so i hard booted the machine and when turned back on, only colors no text or black/blue screen at all. Post cmos one normal beep sounding like no errors found at this point colors and lines load the monitor and they flash on and off for a minute till it appears the system loads then i get a solid screen of just colors. After about 30 seconds the monitor goes into power saving mode shuts off then comes back on. very confusing.

I pulled memory sticks one at a time , reseated mem card which appeared to have been loose in the socket but didnt change once reseated. everything seems to be spinning and operating and i'm guessing the mem card is fried but i'm not convinced.

and yes i plugged the monitor into the lap tap and it works fine. So any input is appreciated in advance.

1. It's a bit unclear from your description: Do you get a proper display during the BIOS/POST phase?

2. Does the problem occur if you boot into Safe Mode?

3. If possible, connect another (known-to-be-working) monitor. Does the problem persist?

4. Change the video card.

No display, cant see safe mode. Only colors straight up and down verticly.

I described the bios/post beep by audible only sorry.

Last time i had a vid card go bad i could atleast see the bios start so im worried this is a mobo problem or cpu rather than a vid card.

It could be a lower-level problem than the vid card, but even at the BIOS stage, the vid card is still part of the signal flow. The reason that one sometimes sees good output during the BIOS stage but not after that is that the card swtches to a different display mode once Windows takes over in the boot process. In other words, a vid card can fail in such a way that it can display the "primitive" output used by the BIOS screens, but not the more advanced modes used by the OS.

In the normal hierarchy of troubleshooting a problem such as yours, testing with a different video card would be the next logical step unless you have specific reason to suspect another component.

Took the vid card in for a bench test. Didnt pass so i purchased a new vid card. All is well now. Thanks for the input.

Cool- glad you got it sorted fairly painlessly.