Blinking Screen on bootup, Followed by Computer Crash

[friedcomputer]

I've had a reoccuring problem on my Windows XP desktop.
Recently, when I boot up my computer, as soon as I enter in the password and the homescreen comes up, the screen begins to blink. It flashes black for a second, then goes back to the normal screen. Then it flashes black again about 5 seconds later, and this process repeats.

After 5-10 flashes, or a minute of being logged into my computer, the screen flashes off again, then stays off. The light on the monitor turns off, as if I had turned off my computer, but my computer is still running. Then about a minute later, the monitor turns back on, BUT, all it shows is a screen that is gray and black and fades between the two, as if someone were pouring gray over a black screen. This pouring image goes on for about 2 minutes, then the monitor shuts off, and the computer is soon to follow.

Additionally, I had been having problems with sketchy images and randomly and incorrectly colored pixels in the weeks coming before the above problem.

My computer is a Dell XPS of about 2 years, running XP.

Is there anyway to fix this?
If not, would I be able to retreive all the files+information saved on my computer, and if so, how would I go about doing this?

[SKULLZ1987]

This sounds like a wired problem! M first instinct is to ask if you have changed any hardware recently or if you have had any power surges recently?

If not I would suggest trying another graphics card or possibly changing the memory modules.