alright, here's the deal. it's a long story, but here goes...

one day my parents went into a sleepmode that it wouldn't wake from. reboot, the monitor stayed in sleep mode. there is no onboard graphics. so i figured, maybe it's the card. so we got a new one. seemed okay at first, but then the comp went into a neverending circle of self reboots. at that point i was like meh..okay format the hard drive. put it back in after that, and then during xp reinstalls, the thing would bsod without mercy over and over. then i figured that maybe the card was faulty, so i put in for another card. the new card got here today, but the sleep mode hell has come back. going with the process of elimination i decided to replace the psu. so i got a new one today. i got it to work with me on the install once, but during that time the monitor went to sleep, but at least it didn't bsod on me. the last thing i did was pop out the cmos battery, to see if that would reset it. on the following restart i got a quick image for the first time. it busted out a cmos checksum error, and then the monitor went to sleep mode again... all in all here's a recap.

problem: monitor is stuck on sleep mode

replaced parts: video card, psu, and formatted the hdd

experiments: hooked up two other monitors. they stay in sleep mode as well. popped the cmos out. no luck.

running ability: the pc powers and posts, ( i'm assuming) the hdd is spinning and seeking. so it sounds like everything is doing it's thing.

any tips? i'm kinda running out of ideas. it's a ridiculous situation.

So much for troubleshooting.

There was no need to format or replace the video card. Sounds like your CPU is overheating or your power supply is failing...my guess is it's overheating. Check for a dust clogged heatsink or bad cooling fan.

"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Bad ram, or Motherboard is going OUT..

Diddo Ghostman 1.

Don't post if you ate razor blades for breakfast!