I have an Alienware Area-51m 7700 running windows XP.

It has all the signs of turning on but the screen remains dark. After turning it off and on several times it will start but then freezes after a little while. Any ideas what is going on?

Is this a new problem?

Does it make any beeps?

Does the monitor turn on however briefly? Perhaps to say "No Signal"?

First and easiest thing to troubleshoot is the RAM.

For starters just reseat one stick in the first slot and see what happens.

Also resetting the CMOS might help.

This is a new problem. There are no beeps and the computer no longer shows anything on the screen. I've tried as you suggested but the problem persists.

Boot it with no RAM and see if it beeps.

No beeps. Same story.

Did it ever beep? Once at startup is normal.

In other words do you know if your motherboard speaker works or ever worked?

It used to beep every now and then on startup but its not doing that now.

Do the fans run?

Does the hard drive appear to spin up?

Case lights? Motherboard LED?

Keyboard lights?

Did you clear the CMOS settings?

If the motherboard is getting power it should definitely BEEP endlessly with no RAM installed. Assuming that the motherboard is functioning.

No beeps in this situation, assuming the power supply is good, tend to point to a dead motherboard.

All the fans are running, the hard drive starts up, but there is no beeping even without the ram installed

If you tried to clear the CMOS settings then there's not much else you can do.

Remove all the hardware and rebuild from scratch if you want. Reseat the CPU.

Try to boot with only the CPU; RAM; and Graphics card. (motherboard/monitor).

Reseat all the power connections etc. Basically rebuild it from scratch.

If nothing comes from this the choice is a repair shop or a new motherboard.

In most cases a new motherboard will be cheaper than a repair shop.