Black screen

I haven't experienced the above, but I can say that from Vista onward I would occasionally experience a black screen during start. If waiting 5 minutes for Vista to sort itself out didn't do the trick, I would find I couldn't power down the monitor: I had to physically unplug and re-plug it in.

Now if you ever have a laptop issue where you turn the laptop on, the LEDs light up, but the screen never lights up, take a look at "HP Black Screen of Death". It affects Alienware laptops, too...HP just has the most posts about it (and I'm sorry to say that I *have* had that happen on a brand-new HP just last month).