Sounds like something was screwed up when the power went out...

Is it locked up after that at the black screen?

Does the numlock light go out when you try to press it?

I've seen a few times where Windows loses the video driver when it loses power...

Maybe the monitor's at a resolution the videocard can't display? I've seen that too...

Consider resetting the monitor to basic settings...

If that doesn't work, then consider rebooting the machine and pressing the escape key sequence to stop the boot... like F8 or smething (I think it tells you what it is when it's booting) and selecting a generic video driver...

At least yours boots up... mine came up with some .exe error and I had to downgrade to Win2000....

 

Try booting in safe mode and go from there.

 

Numlock stays on....won't shut off. Nothing on the keyboard works. I'll try fawking with it more tonight.

 

OK, the actual message on the blue XP screen is 'setup is restarting. . . . . . . . . . . .'


I can get into the setup area (think it's called bios?) by holding the 'delete' key on powerup, but i can't do a damn thing once there.....keys won't move or select anything. Another wierd thing----the system time fluctuated by hours the more times I went in there. Not sure what the hell that means.....


I think it's fucked.

 

Try a new keyborad. After trying that and trying to boot in safe mode again, try booting with the XP cd and see if anything works. Might have to re-install XP.