Alright, so here's the whole story.

I've been playing Splintercell pandora tomorrow. I downloaded it, illegally because I already own chaos theory but didn't want to install it for the sake of starforce.

PT is not as good as CT and it was bugging me playing an illegal game so I took a chance and reinstalled CT.

the game crashed to the blue screen twice during setup but while playing it was fine.

after playing I used the starforce removal tool.

Then I played Oblivion for a while with no problems.

today I pop in oblivion, play for about 10 mins then it crashes, thing is, this ain't a normal crash.
I hear the sound stick so I know it crashed but no blue screen. then I notice that my monitorbehaving as if my pc is turned off (the orange light rather than green was on)

I restarted my PC but my monitor, mouse, keyboard, all that stuff is not getting any signal. as if the pc was turned off.
I checked all the plugs. opened it up and checked the powersupply to make sure everything was still plugged in.

There are no problems that I can see.

When I turn on my PC the HD light and the lights on the drives appear to act normal.

I recently installed a new DVD burner so I unplugged that and then after turning my PC on the monitor light turned green but nothing came up on the screen.
then the light went back to orange, then to green then it stayed on orange.

then after unplugging my other DVD drive the monitor light stayed green but still nothing on the screen.

wtf.

Help me please.

Your video card: Onboard or Separate?
Because it sounds like you fried that.

That's similar how my monitor behaves when my video card is out...if you're on a separate video card (and playing games like that, I'd guess you are) try plugging the monitor into the onboard video.

hmm.. well apparently I don't have an onboard card.
there's no other monitor imput other than on my video card.

But the thing is, it's not just the monitor, the keyboard and mouse are the same.
their both USB and I tried the mouse in the ps2 slot with a converter but nothing.

if it were just the vid card then the other stuff should still work right?

--------------------

Here's another option I'm thinking of, tell me if you think this will work.
based on appearances, all the hardware seems to still be good.
which would mean this is just a software problem.
So, since I'm going home to see my parents this weekend, I could take my harddrives out and hook them up to one of their pcs and back up everything onto my external harddrive then just format the drives.

Does that sound like a good idea?

Well if your numlock on your keyboard won't come on and off and you know you have power, then it's likely your CPU or Memory got fried.

hmm... well my CPU I probably would not attempt to replace.
but when you say memory, are you talking about the sticks of ram?

How could I tell exactaly where the problem is?

You do know that Pandora Tomorrow doesn`t have StarForce don`t you?

OK i can't condone the use of illegal software. i have to close this thread. if you want to open another just detailing the technical problem then feel free, but there must be no talk of illegally obtained software.