Need Video help please

My comp is an e-machines (yeah yeah, I know) AMD Athalon 2400+ with 386 megs of ram, a Dell flatpanel display and a GForce FX5200 AGP card.

Recently I noticed some werid flicker lines in my flatpanel display

This progressed to the monitor shutting off and then on again right away (the light on the mointor goes from green to yellow and then back to green when it comes back on) this makes me think it's losing it's signal.

The flicker seems worst when heavy loading is occuring

Um.. what else? Lets see.

Oh, I checked for spyware with multiple programs, and then I checked for virii with updated definition files. No dice, no change.

I uninstalled some recently installed programs, no change.

I even updated the driver (Nvidia GForce FX5200 I think) and it actualy got much much worse. At this point, it gets into windows, or to the blue "windows" screen that you see just before the desktop is displayed and stops dead. Sometimes I hear the windows startup sound, sometimes it repeats and stops part way through, like someones trying to play DJ with it.

However, it always freezes now since the driver update. The best part is that on the windows loading screens there's no problem or flicker at all, and before the driver update The screen ran perfectly in Safe Mode (Haven't tried safemode since I updated the driver).

And a little background. Over the last few months, the power would just cut out and the whole computer would reboot. Usually only when playing Doom3 or HL2 or something. A little more recently I've have it spontaniously reset on me even when in normal windows. Or if I left it on when I went to work or overnight, I'll wake up to find clear sings that it had recet itself overnight or while I was out.

So, there you have it, my long list of problems. I've talked to people who know far more about computers than I do, and I've heard everything from Motherboard, to ram, to powersupply problems.

I'm most inclided to think it's the power supply. After all, it started resetting when I was in high power demand situations. And then resetting on normal situations. And now not even sending a signal to the monitor (the light turning to yellow when it shuts the monitor off and on again tells me that it's just not getting a signal, so it's not the monitor). This is supported by the fact that it works in safe mode perfectly (which I believe is when minimal drivers and programs are loaded, and therefore minimal power consumption)

However, the fact that it wont even boot fully into windows confuses me. Pissy power supply aside, shouldn't it still be able to get into windows?

Any ideas on what's the problem(s) are much appreciated. Obsviously, since I own an e-machine in the first place, obviously cost is a moajor issue and I don't want to spend any money that I don't have to spend.

Thanks

The windows boot problem is probably due to a bad video driver install. If you can still boot into safe mode, go into device manager and delete the graphics driver, than reboot.

My first guess is that your case is full of dust. Check it out to see. A dusty case will cause all these problems.

After that, I think your graphics card is dying. Does you Emachines computer have integrated graphics that you could try out to see if the lines in the monitor go away?

My last guess would be the power supply, but I really think the other two are more likely.