Once it goes black, you must go back to the beginning, that is.

Not necessarily, no. Sounds more like a problem with your monitor or graphics, I guess. Check your monitor to PC cable, and the video input jack on your PC. Make sure the connection's solid.

Possibly. There are things to check to see what's going on, from the most simple: The first thing to check is your screensaver. Does the picture on the screen come back when you move the mouse, or press a key? The screensaver might be set to go to a black screen, or the computer's power saving mode might be trying to switch the monitor off. Both of those can be disabled. Best to check all the cables in the back are securely fastened, including the power cables and the ones going between the screen and the monitor. One of those could be loose. Can you hear the computer doing things when the screen goes black? Can you still hear a fan going, or a little whirring noise that might mean the disk inside is still going? If the computer goes quiet, and the lights on it go dark, then there's a problem with the power supply. If the lights are on, and it's making some normal fan noises, then the problem's likely to be somewhere else. Check your anti-virus software is up to date, and run a full scan. Do the same for a spyware scanner. This should remove the possibility of any nefarious program causing things to break. What happens next depends on how comfortable you are fiddling with a computer's innards. If it's still in warranty, or you'd rather not work inside it, you can take it to a PC repair place and explain the symptoms and what you have done to make sure it's not a loose cable, or the screensaver. You can try the vendor's website for your graphics card to see if there's a new display driver for it. A newer piece of software to run the graphics card might fix an incompatibility problem. You could also run Windows Update (assuming you have Windows, of course) to see if there are any new high priority updates. You can try opening the case and making sure everything's securely attached inside - although if you've not done this before, this can be daunting. You're very unlikely to hurt yourself doing this, but it can be difficult to know what you can move around inside without damaging the computer. Hope this helps.

It is most likely the moniter (computer screen) and your harddrive should be fine ..if your computer turnd on and the screen is black then this is the most likely problem