Computer Boots to Blank Screen w/ Cursor Only

The computer I have is an Inspiron 600m. It has a 64mb Radeon 9000 video card and is running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2. For about two years the computer has worked nearly flawlessly. However, about three weeks ago after doing nothing notable that I can remember, I restarted the computer and Windows failed to load properly. The cursor appears and the hourglass blinks on and off a couple times as the system boots up but nothing besides the cursor is displayed.

I have searched the web and this forum for a while and have been unable to fix the problem. My first step was to boot up the machine in safe mode and reinstall the video card. This did not help it. I also tried uninstalling the video card and then starting up the computer normally and again it did not work. I continued to try to reinstall the video card using different drivers. After one installation the system miraculously booted up; however, upon restarting the machine I was back to where I started.

I have tried attaching an external monitor and nothing is displayed. One thing that gave me some success was messing with the suspend switch. I jiggled it around and pulled on it and at one point the computer started up successfully. However, when I restarted my computer, it again booted to a blank screen. I restarted the computer several more times jiggling the little toggle switch and eventually the computer booted up again. I then put the computer in hibernation mode thinking that it would be able to boot out of that, however, when I tried to start the computer I got the blank screen again.

Frustrated and thinking the problem had to do with the suspend switch being held down, I pulled off the hinge cover and attempted to manually pull up on the lever that the hinge switch rested upon. This was to no avail, and the computer continued to give me the blank screen. I also tried manually moving the lever down while the computer was on, but this did nothing. Also, although the suspend switch normally put the computer into hibernation mode, it now does nothing when I have the blank screen and nothing when I am in safe mode.

One other thing that could be of use in diagnosing the problem is that when the system stops loading, I am still able to toggle the Caps Lock LED on and off.