Black screen/won't boot up

I went to boot up and the power came on but immediately after the HDD-LED went off and the PWR-LED blinked and continues to do so. I cannot use the reset button or turn off the computer with the power button. Nothing ever comes on the screen at all. I can only turn the machine on and off by the power strip or unplugging it. The evening before it happened, I downloaded an update for the Java VM. I know of 2 people that did the same thing with no problems...(they have Win98SE) I have Win98. I didn't immediately reboot I just shutdown for the night after the VM update.
Also prior to this, I have had about 3 episodes of my machine just rebooting by itself without notice.
Thanks

 

Try booting with a Windows 98 start up disk in the drive. If no joy, then you likely have a hardware failure. The possibilities are numerous at this point so post back after the above attempt and explain what happened in detail.

If you are able to boot to the disk, type the following command at the dos prompt:

scanreg /restore

and press enter. From the screen presented, select a version of your Registry that predates this problem and try booting.

 

Thanks Zephyr. I have no details...it didn't do anything different.

I put the start up disk in the drive before plugging it in since the computer goes on at that time. The monitor really doesn't even come on. I have a red light on the monitor when the computer is off and a green light when its on.

 

The prognosis isn't good since it won't boot to the floppy.

I strongly suspect that something has failed on the Motherboard and is overloading the power supply causing it to go into protected mode and not deliver any power. It could also be a bad power supply itself. Any peripheral that short circuits and overloads the power supply can also cause this so you'll probably want to take it in for a professional diagnosis and estimate.

If you are up to it, you can unplug everything from the MOBO (except the power supply) and see if the power supply will stay energized and show you some video. This isn't for the faint of heart and requires a certain amount of knowledge and judgement so be warned.

 

My hubby has done things on that order. I'll let him do it if he wants. I prefer a pro to check it out tho. Thanks again