No mike, I just pressed on it and the system failed. I have tried all in the manual owbist sent me a link for. All without success. I'm taking it back to where I bought it so they can sort it out. The screen was getting darker and darker and both brightness and contrast were on the max 100 so maybe I have a dud for it not quite 6 months old. Thank to you and owbist for your assistance. Cheers to you both.

You may have a driver mismatch to the monitor. Try this: Boot up in the safe mode. That mode loads only the essential software to operate the computer and loads a low resolution, generic monitor driver. Does your monitor oepeate in this mode? If so, you may be on the path to a cure. Change the monitor driver to one that suits your monitor, then reboot. After you get it working again, check to see how the sleep modes are set. Before you change the driver, record the one that is current. You may wish to return to return to it. ************************** A tip for future reference: Before changing monitors, set the driver to the low resolution VGA mode, 640 x 480 pixels. Change monitors and then change to a driver one that matches the replacement monitor. ************************** I see another possible problem and that is your old monitor may not be plug-and-play. The later versions of Windows do plug-n-play while booting. It attempts to interrogate your monitor and if it gets a return of garbage, it may act on it if it isn't smart enough to know this is not a plug-n-play device. I ruined a monitor once when I first installed Windows 95. I had a video card that had the capablity to output a wide range of driving voltages to the monitor's sweep circuits. However, it was not a plug-n-play device. Windows set the card to the wrong voltages and overdrove the sweep circuits. The monitor lasted about 5 minutes. Lets us know how it turns out. If the monitor does not operate in the "safe mode", there is something more wrong - could be the monitor, or could be the video hardware /circuits.

Update: I think my problems have been solved/resolved. I did a google search for my particular monitor asking for info on a monitor that wouldn't shut down. Here was the help I got for that: 1 press menu button 2 hit + to get to "factory reset" 3 hit menu button again 4 hit + to get to "all settings" (NOT "factory") 5 hit menu button again I did this, then shutdown. It did the shutdown correctly. However, the colors remained pale. I unplugged the monitor and gave it a slot of its own. Re-ran the following 5 steps and the color is now normal. I had tried playing with the buttons before but apparently it needed a precise sequence. My son cleaned the tower out (said it was practically clean as a whistle inside) and moved it on top of my desk where it's fairly easy get to the back of the tower. He also left his spare monitor here, just in case. I'm a happy camper and want to thank each and every one of you for your help and suggestions. Shirley

win 98 getting kind of old!!! From you description: keyboard lights blink and the mouse light comes on, hear the fan whirring and soft beeps coming from the monitor and the tower. To me that sounds like it's posting correctly, check you cable monitor connections first. Then try another monitor.