Thanks for the suggestions.  Upon re reading my post, I left out an important piece of info.  When the screen goes black, that laptop is completely shut off.  I have to remove the battery and hold the power switch for awhile, then replace the battery to get it to start back up.  It then says "windows was shut down unexpectedly........." I am going to replace the system board this weekend since I had read on another forum that Dell had a run of bad ones that exhibited this.

George

                          PCSOFT's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>