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My computer started flickering on the night before last, the night after I had it at the school and the power went out
I'm not sure if there was a surge that went through my computer when that happened
however the problem happens the most when I try to view pictures that have already been saved on my computer and with youtube
places it flickers, on an image, it blurs and makes a blob of pixels instead of a picture, at times the screen goes totally black and then comes back to normal within 1 to 5 seconds
the tool bar where time and sound plus power settings went completely black a few times by itself and my instant messenger keeps flickering from normal to black

what are possible reasons for this to happen
is there anyway to fix this?

along with it flickering the USB ports are not working

My first guess would be pointing at an issue with your power supply. Fortunately power supplies aren't terribly expensive and are generally fairly easy to replace -- the hardest part is usually unplugging it all because the connectors can sometimes be really snug; actually installing the new one is really easy unless you have a really small computer with funky cable routing.

My second guess would be related to overheating. This is especially likely if these problems don't start up when you first turn the computer on but instead get progressively worse the more you use it. Make sure all the fans are clear and spinning (the air coming out of them should be kinda warm and moving briskly).

Third guess is bad RAM, but this is actually fairly rare compared to the other two problems.

Edit: Actually, if you had a power surge, that makes guesses 1 and 3 more likely, and guess 2 less likely. Your description doesn't sound like the video card itself is damaged, although it's certainly possible.

actually it seems 2 is most likely I found when I had my normal room fan beside my computer to make it cool down the ports work... also there seems to be a windows error, my BF was testing a disk boot operating system and for some reason the DVD player actually worked and worked once when I restarted windows however since then every restart it hasn't worked again, which means it is the way it was before he looked at it,

again, he said he would try to take it apart and clean it out for me, once I get the canned-air, hopefully that will do the trick, I'd rather not mess with the computer myself, which could lead to more mistakes, and thank you ^-^

It might be your computer monitor becoming damaged.

Issue seems resolved/no longer valid, so I'm locking this thread.