My computer is pretty old, an HP Pavillion Desktop about 10 years old, but has been kept fairly current with upgrades and some new RAM, has been working great, just maybe not the fastest CPU on the block. I left the room yesterday with it working perfectly, came back to an unresponsive computer. I tried to reboot, but after the Windows splash screen, the one with the little blue bar moving from left to right under it, it changes to a blank, black screen, no cursor, no response. I have to unplug the tower to even try to reboot it. It will, however, boot OK in safe mode, I even defragged it in safe mode hoping that would help. I've tried the "Last Known Good" option, no better. Right after it happened, it booted all the way to the desktop two or three times, but then while it was still loading items that run in the taskbar, it went black. Also, after I let it sit all night unplugged (thinking it might be the power supply unit), after the first splash screen it displayed a screen of random colored lines, and then froze. That has happened a couple of times.We've been having some "brown outs" in my area lately, lights dimming for a few seconds, that kind of thing. I suspect it might have damaged something, or spiked my hard drive, but I'm not sure. It's so old, I don't remember if I even had an XP recovery disc, I do have a SP3 upgrade disk. Any ideas?1 person needs an answerI do too

If it boots into Safe Mode, then likely a driver is the issue, if you have restore points try one of thosehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/304449

Well, after reading a lot of other posters with similar problems, I decided it was probably something to do with my video card/drivers. I had already tried restore points, but because the computer could never get past the POST screen, the system restore wasn't completly finishing, and would stop during the reboot at the same place, just after the screen with the blue bars. That caused checkdisk to start a couple of times, but everything reported OK with that. So I booted in safe mode, and completely uninstalled the video card in device manager. When I rebooted normally, everything seemed to be working great, except that when Windows "found" the video card, it set the refresh rate at 60 hertz. When I went into control panel to chang it back to 75 hertz like it used to be, (less flicker on the monitor), it crashed again. So I took the video card out completely and replaced it with the old one that had come with the system originally, and now everything is fine, just a tad bit slower. Time for a new video card. ;)I hope this helps someone else who's having the same problem, I was about to conclude that I had a fatal problem with the hard drive or something, and was ready to go looking for a new system. As it is now, less than $20 on ebay will buy me a better card (used) than the one I just took out, and will be faster too. Gotta love it when you dodge a bullet.