hello, here is my situation.
my computer specs:
my computer doesn't run right now so this is from memory.
amd athlon 700 mhz
slot a processor
512 megs of ram
msi motherbaord amd 750 chipset (ms-6195)
windows 98 SE
razer boomslang mouse
gateway internet keyboard
gateway monitor
boston acoustics speakers
voodoo 3 3000 vid card
linksys network card
56k modem ... us robotics
cd rom ... toshiba
yamaha scsi cd burner
ultra wide scsi card ...
some sound card
2 hard drives an ibm 9 gig and a western digital 27 gig

ok, i ordered some ram from crutial, a 256 ram chip to put into my computer. i shut the computer down and opened my case. it was really dusty inside! (i had a case fan blowing on it) i took a 128 meg ram chip out and put in the new 256 chip i just bought. dimm slot 1 had a 256, dimm slot 2 had the new 256, and dimm slot 3 had a 128 (some brand chip in it). (there are only 3 dimms on this board)i put the side back on and booted the beast back up. so far so good! 640 megs of ram yippy! to test my new ram i decided to run a little quake 3 against a bot to see how it felt to have more ram. well i never finished my match. my screen went black and the power light on the monitor was blinking. well this has happened 1 time before in the past. (my computer has shut itself off for no apparent reason) well the computer isn't really off... it gets power and the lights on the case are on but nothing comes up on the screen. so i think it might be a screen saver kicking in (even though i have screen savers turned off) but nothing will come up on the screen so i press the reset switch. in the past when this happened to me i just reset my computer and everything came back up and running just fine. this was not the case this time though! so, i pressed the reset switch, my computer detected my vid card went on detecting my hard drives and then the screen went black ... blinky light on the monitor ... so i looked into the case (i took the side back off) and all the lights on my motherboard were red (on my motherboard there are diganostic led lights to tell you what is wrong with the motherboard) ok, i powered down and powered back up again ... got into windows for about 30 seconds and i got the black screen and the blinking light on my monitor and all the motherboard lights are red again. so naturally i am thinking that the ram is bad or something... so i took the ram out and powered back up ... same type of thing happened ... the dreded black screen ... well i heard that this particular chipset is very ram sensitive so i took everything out except the new crutial 256 ram chip and booted up and the same black screen happened again. (why i left the new ram in i don't know) thinking this was stupid of me. i tried doing the same thing with the old crutial 256 meg ram chip. same thing again. right now i am starting to make little whining sounds. i rebooted again, over and over again... so i had to make sure that all the plugs were in their proper places and i didn't accidently knock one out... i was hoping i did. i unplugged the cd rom and plugged it back in, i checked the hard drives, connections to the motherboard and connections to the drive itself. the a drive was ok and plugged in, the scsi card was plugged in the modem and everything else was pluged in and double checked. i rebooted after i had plugged all the cords back into the back of the computer. The same thing happened again the screen was all black with the little blinking light and all red motherboard lights. i thought my gateway montior was going bad! it happened to a friend so maybe it is happening to me too. i don't wanna buy a new monitor! this is terrible... so i picked up the monitor i happened to have sitting on the ground next to my computer. (my friend had given it to me) i never actually tested it to see if it worked, but i plugged it in to see if my gateway monitor was going bad ... same black screen after post... same screen same screen... ok the monitor is good (yippy) i look into my case again after i hooked up my old monitor and rebooted 20 more times in a vein attempt to magically have my computer run. all red lights except one green one .... HRM *breaks out user manual* it stopped on the initialization of the video card... my video card is going down the tubes! i just bought it! ok i bought it a while ago ... well i just happen to have a viper 550 laying next to the monitor that was on the ground earlier. i popped that thing in there and let it rip.... so far so good ... got into windows ... it was the vid card ... getting up the video card .. windows found new hardware bla bla bla ... black screen again! this is really bad ... so it wasn't the video card afterall. sooooo i put the voodoo back in. i contact one of my friends over icq (on a different puter of course)... he comes over ... well before he actually arrives i blame this whole mess on some software i just installed a few days before. that norton antivirus software did this to me.. i can't believe this ... i hate norton ... i hate viruses .... anyway i get booted into windows again and i procede to try to eliminate this norton mess altogether by uninstalling norton utilites 2001.. in the middle of the uninstall the screen goes black ... great ... i get windows back up again and try to uninstall norton again.... before it gets done it goes black again ... i reboot and try uninstalling norton again ... finally it finished with only a few dozen errors (yay) screen goes black again. i try rebooting and i get to windows after a few blackouts from the detecting hard drive stage of booting up. now windows has an error norton utilities can't find schook.vxd and some other file... ok ok ok *clicked ok to all the messages* goes black ... ok my friend arrives... he tells me to do everything i have tried to already do ... we do them together and nothing works ... bad power supply? nope fans still getting power when the screen is black... sooo after he harrasses me about norton a million times ... you broke your computer again! we decide to flash the cmos or something like that ... it was supposed to clear out the bios memory or something. moved the jumper powered the cpu up ... there is some weird battery error now ... my friend says something like oops shoulda read the whole thing first. power it off ... you were supposed to power down, move the jumper, then move it back, then power back up. ok we did that and the black screen kept coming back to haunt us. so we decided to flash the motherboard bios ... we went to the page of the manufacturer got the exe file needed to do the procedure. double clicked it to extract the files onto a bootable floppy ... took the floppy and booted my puter off of it .... before the floppy could get going the screen went black again... so we booted and tried again ... well we never successfully updated the bios cause it wouldn't stay on long enought to do it. i don't know what to do i tried everything .. my friends suggested an overheating problem with the cpu but it was cool as cool gets. i have a night class to go to so i gotta go... i go to class and then come back home... i decided that the motherboard was messed up and i ordered an abit ka7-100 mobo that uses a diff chipset and a i also ordered a cooler for my cpu. but all that jazz hasn't came yet... soooo i am wondering if any of you ULTRA TECHIES can help me out ... what is going on here? newbie techies welcome too! throw some ideas out at me... i know i didn't cover everything i tried, but this is gonna be a monster post as it is.