Black Screen from the get go

I have a dell xps M1210 laptop running Vista.
Hope someone can help. Heres what's happened: Three days ago i booted it up and worked fine like usual. After about (not really sure) maybe 1 hr, I noticed a very light white rectangle on the screen with 6-8 equally sized rectangles within the 3-4 inch high by 2 inch wide main rectangle. It was vertical and just off center of the screen. Everything froze up. Cant remember if I was able to turn it off using the power button. When I rebooted, pure black screen. I removed all power(including battery) and tried again. Still nothing. I left it and tried it again 24 hrs later. It booted up properly. After about half hr, same thing. I rebooted and it worked enough for me to put in the vista disk and rebooted. I hit a key to boot thru disk. I then saw something about do i want to install vista(which really worries me). I clicked repair when the option presented itself. Well then it seemed to lock and wasn't doing anything after a couple of seconds. After 10 min of nothing I removed all power incl battery. Ever since when I boot up it's pure black screen and the hard drive indicator blinks twice and then nothing, including black screen. I'm hoping someone tells me I haven't lost my videos and music. Could my media still be recoverable?
Sorry for the long story.
One last thing, I am able to turn off and on using power button.
Thanks in advance,
seair

 

All your files should be totally safe and completely recoverable. When using the Vista disc, as long as you never made a choice to format or delete a partition or drive, everything should be fine. It sounds to me like maybe the PC got too hot, and/or you had a video chip failure or RAM failure. Since you obviously have access to a working PC, try plugging the PC monitor into the laptop's VGA port (all laptops have a regular monitor port, it's usually blue and has 3 rows of pins). Then turn on the monitor, turn on the laptop. You'll probably have to press a key combination to switch the laptop video-out to go through the VGA port, Dell laptops commonly use Fn + F8 so you'd hold down the Fn key (the function key in the lower left of your keyboard) while pressing the F8 key up in the top row of the keyboard. Hold down Fn and press F8 once and wait a few seconds, then press F8 again and wait a few seconds (still with Fn being held down), continue holding down Fn and press F8 every 5 or 10 seconds until a picture appears on the external monitor. If no picture appears, then we know that either the entire video chip has failed (and not just the LCD inverter or backlight) or the motherboard has failed. You can also try swapping out the RAM if you have other memory modules available, but I really don't think this is a memory issue... if you never get a picture and you just want to save the data, you'll have to remove the hard drive from the laptop, install it in an external enclosure designed for your type of hard drive (2.5" and it'll be either SATA or IDE/ATA/PATA), and plug it into the USB port of a functional PC. You should be able to access your stuff and burn it discs for safekeeping.

GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks dlb,
Unfortunately, no luck. After turning on the monitor, yellow orange light. I then powered up laptop. Light on monitor turned green, but nothing on the monitor. I tried two monitors. The first looked like it was missing a few pins on the connector. Still went from yellow orange to green. When I powered off the laptop, monitor message wasPMS Off mode. When I tried it on another monitor(no missing pins in connector), light on monitor went from yellow orange to green. When I shut off laptop, it went back to yellow orange. Can you suggest my next step please?
Thanks again!

 

ok DPMS means Display Power Management Signaling so your display is powered off for some reason.
Look over your keys, you may have to click something to get the display to show on an external monitor. I have to on my laptop. (Fn + F5)

 

So I've taken it to the dell support store. I've been informed that I need to replace the motherboard because the video card is imbedded(part of) in it.
I was then told that it still might not work because it could also be the screen. Motherboard with card quoted at $600+.00. Can just the screen be changed? I don't want to buy a new motherboard if the screen can't be changed. Just in case.
Any advice on what I should do?
Would it be a better idea to buy a new laptop(not a 1210) without hd, memmory etc..and install what I have from my 1210? Or would they not fit?
Would there be anything in the 1210 that I would be able to use in a different laptop?
Thanks all

 

Buy any computer that you want - desktop or laptop with every thing installed. (I think you can find something that costs less than $600 and will work!)
Buy an external enclosure for 2.5" drives, put the hd from the ailing computer into the enclosure. Attach the enclosure via a USB port to your new computer and you should be able to see and work with your files.