My son turned the poewr stirp off ( a few times) that the computer is plugged into while the computer was on.

Now, when I power up the computer, the monitor lights up for a second and then goes dark.  Since I can't see the screen to turn the computer off, I pushed the the main power button on the computer. The system turned off but I noticed I didn't have to hold the button down for several seconds in order for it to power down.  The system turns off as soon as you push the button.

Any suggestions as to what might be the problem would be welcomed. 

  The computer is an E-machine and the montor is a Samsung SyncMaster 912n. THe system is about 5-6 yrs old.

Unplug everything for five minutes, plug it back in and see what happens.  :-/

Tried that first but didn't work.

Does anything show up on the monitor at all?

Turn the computer on, disconnect the monitor cable from the monitor, then reconnect.

Try replacing the little watch battery that saves the bios. If that dosnt work, find a local geek.

Does anything show up on the monitor at all?

The light on the monitor comes on but the screen is blank. The light is very faint though.  I checked the settings to the monitor and the brightness, contrast, color, etc are all fine.

My first guess would be the power supply, but if the computer turns on but doesn't display anything odds are its the motherboard.

Does anything show up on the monitor at all?

The light on the monitor comes on but the screen is blank. The light is very faint though. I checked the settings to the monitor and the brightness, contrast, color, etc are all fine.

your monitor may be bad. can you see lights on the computer tower blinking when you turn it on?

Well it could be a lot of things, from a corrupt OS to a fried CPU or even something as simple as a bad connection.

Here's a Google search that brings up a lot of possibilities and their fixes:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=black+screen+on+bootup&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g-m1