Black screen of death

This has happened twice on my new XPS running Win 7 Professional - the screen goes black, and the harddrive light just stops blinking - like the computer is dead, but the keyboard and other lights are all on

The first time it happened while I was opening up a bunch of pictures in Windows photo viewer (about 20 at once) - my screen went black, keyboard still lit but unresponsive, and harddrive indicator light not blinking at all

Second time was when I hooked my XPS up to my old Inspiron (running Win 7 Home Premium) via ethernet cable while the Inspiron was booting up. As it the Inspiron was coming to the log-in screen, I opened My Computer, and the window began opening and then it happened - screen just went black, unresponsive, keyboard still working, but no HD indicator light

Anyone else experience this? Any idea what's going on? I HATE having to shut down my brand new computer by holding down the power button and risk harming it, and I've already had to do it twice

 

Did you try running Dell Diagnostics? Also check your temperatures.

 

Temps shouldn't have been high at all, since I wasn't doing anything else at the time; I've run Minecraft and TF2 with no problems, but apparently, opening some windows causes it to crash :-/

If it makes any difference, the first time it did it, when I was attempting to open a picture file, the screen went checkerboard yellow/white before the black screen

 

Well try running Dell diagnostics. If that doesn't rule out anything you might have to bite the bullet and RMA it to Dell. I would backup your data before sending it off to Dell.