It seems like it is probably a hardware problem, but I have no idea as to what this could be. I'll try to describe it as best as possible.

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- No recent hardware changes that I'm aware of.
- No significant recent physical damage that I'm aware of. Just normal wear and tear, i.e. bouncing around a little in the backseat of a car, etc.

- Started happening in the last week or so.

- Temperature doesn't seem to be an issue; it happens at any time, regardless.

- Physical movement doesnt seem to be an issue; it happens whether it is sitting stationary, or on my lap w/ slight movement.

Normally, when you hit the power button, the lights flash on. Then you hear the hard drive "initialize". Then the boot screen comes up a few seconds later, and so forth.

When I push the power button, the lights come on, and the hard drive makes it's little noise. But the screen stays blank; no boot screen comes up. After 10-30 seconds or so (this varies greatly), with no boot screen coming up/screen is black, the lights blank go out for a second, turn back on, and the hard drive makes its little noise. It's just as if it the power cut out for a second while the computer was booting up.

This repeats a number of times, until finally the boot screen comes up, and things go normally from there. This happens a random number of times; sometimes it only does this for a couple times, and the boot screen ends up coming up after 30-60 seconds. Sometimes, it takes 10+ minutes... with the light on & the screen black.

The little bit with the power cutting out, lights coming on, and hard drive initialization noise happens at random intervals. Sometimes it will happen several times in 30 seconds or so. Sometimes it will sit there for a minute or 2 before doing this.

And yet, sometimes it starts fairly normally (although during the time I've been looking at it, there is always an unusually long delay before the initial boot screen comes up)

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The only thing that I can think of is that it has something to do with the hardware that is causing it to short circuit or something.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.