screen flashes black--->freezes

Hey everyone, i really hope somebody will have a solution for this:

After i type in the password and windows is loading up, the screen flashes black for maybe 2 seconds and then it continues loading. HOWEVER, if i'm on battery and it's below 50%, then after flashing black, the whole start bar thing at the bottom never goes back to normal. it just stays black. i can move my mouse around but nothing works and i would have to restart manually.

I've already called lenovo about this, they've sent a new battery. that didn't do it. i've sent it in to the depot and it has come back more or less the same. I rarely used my laptop at all before this happened, so i really doubt it's some new software issue (and plus i've tried system restore.

Everything else seems to work fine. the only odd thing i see is that when the screen asking for password comes up, it has already selected the user for me (though there is only 1). i think i'm supposed to click on my user myself, am i not? but that seems like such a minor thing. but when i do put in password, it takes a pretty long time to load and the screen just gets progressively darker as it loads.

oh, and i have XP professional not vista.

Anyone else experience this at all? any ideas?

 

Do a search for "fix for screen flicker" you'll find a fix for Vista, but it might work for XP as well. Worth a try.