My monitor keeps going into Power Saver mode and my computer won’t boot.

I was working on my computer when the monitor spontaneously went into Power Saver mode and turned off. I was forced to do a hard shut down using the power button. I tried restarting the computer and got to the Windows logo before the screen went into Power Saver mode again. After another hard shut down, I restarted and only got to the Dell screen before losing the monitor again. A few more tries produced various results – in some cases, the monitor continued to go out from the Dell screen, while in some cases it would just sit on the Dell screen indefinitely, there was even one time through that it reached the auto-chkdsk stage, but promptly died a few minutes into that. I can select F2 or F12 from the Dell screen – but it doesn’t actually enter the BIOS setup or the Boot menu before the monitor dies again. It seems as though it sometimes finishes POST and other times it doesn’t, though I don’t hear any beeps in either case. (Yes, there is an internal speaker connected.)

It strikes me as being a problem with the BIOS or the video card – but it is really hard for me to tell. There could be a problem with the OS on the drive, but it doesn’t seem to get far enough in the boot process for me to think that’s the problem. I’ve read a number of posts with similar symptoms, but they don’t seem to ever run into the problem of not even being able to get into the BIOS setup or Boot menu, so it’s hard to know if they’re having the same problem.

A couple of days before this problem started, there is a chance that I was hit with a power surge which flipped the surge protector. I was able to reboot after that, though it took a few restarts before it would get all the way through the boot process. After that it was performing normally until the current issue popped up.

Does anyone have advice on how to troubleshoot this problem? I am pulling my hair out trying to get my box back up (and if you saw my hairline, you would know I can’t afford to be pulling out any more of it).

Thanks,
Justin