Sometimes, when I am finished with an application and close it. or when I store word or excel data onto one of my hard drives, my monitor goes completely blank for a few seconds then, when it comes back on it has to restore all of the icons on the desktop, one at a time,  and sometimes it recofigures my whole desktop arrangement.  Really annoying, as i have a  loaded desktop.  Is this normal for XP? ?   I am running windows XP, on a 2 yr old home built machine with 1 Gb of ram, Athlon cpu, two 80 Gb hard drives, partitioned into 4 drives of 40 Gb each.   Anyone have any IDEA what is going on? ?  Thanks   JimThere are MANY issues that could be causing this including but not limited to RAM issues and or corrupt vid card drivers.

Do a search for a utility called Desklay which saves your desktop settings and restores them with one clik.

Meantime check your vid card drivers and run memtest on that RAM.GERU. thanks  for the comeback.       I searched for desklay.  All the web sites were printed in some oriental language I did not understand.  HOWEVER one called "help desk survival" offerd a tool kit for $199.00.   Beyond my means.  
     I checked my ram with "PC Mechanic" and defragged it.  Found no problems.  
  Vidio drivers all have been checked and updated.  I have a NVIDIA GeForce FX5500, I believe.  Capable of drivein 2 monitors.  The display blanked out again last night when i stored something on the desktop.If you are having no luck finding Desklay send me a PM...

As to the video issue i would remove a side panel and make sure the fan is working on that card.

If it is power down and remove the card and clean the contacts with a PENCIL eraser and re-seat it.

As usual take all ESD precautions when working inside the case and make sure all power sources are disconnected.PATIOPATIO,   I  WILL TRY AGAIN.  Hit the wrong key.  
THE PROBLEM SEEMS TO BE GETTING MORE PREVALENT.   :-/
1   HAVE NO LUCK GETTING DESKLAY
2   THERE IS NO FAN ON VIDEO CARD, ONE ON AUDIO AND IT IS WORKING
3   HAVE NOT TRIED CLEANING CONTACTS YET.  WILL DO.  I HAVE NO PROBLEM GOING INTO MY   MACHINE. BEEN THERE MANY TIMES  
    I am very appreciative of the help you are offering here.  Thanks PC Mechanic isn't a full RAM tester DLOad and run Memtest. It creates a bootable floppy. Let it run a few hours. Quote

GeForce FX5500,