4600 Sluggish Boot Up

Is this a window unit?

First off: Protection is important and the ONLY way to go is with a UPS (Battery backup protector). These devices allow the computer to SLOWLEY close down and protect the motherboard and hard drives. Simple bar protectors are of little to no use whatsoever. As for the Start UP; the Boot Sector on the Hard Drive has been compromised. If you attempted to start with the F8 key when you started up the computer and failed to Boot in the Safe Mode, you definitely lost the operating system.
You can try to do a Restore, but that may not be effective.
When a Computer starts, there is usually a Beep (called a Post) and one Beep indicates the motherboard is active. Several beeps indicate a mal-function of the motherboard and it was damaged. In some cases, the Memory (RAM) can be damaged from electrical surge, and thus the computer will not start and the monitor will not be active. Do not touch the internal leads as they are not the problem. In closing, a CPU is very sensitive to power surge and the CPU in some cases can be defective. All in all, with so may options or repair issues; only a professional has the equipment to search for the solution. Good luck: [email protected]

More than likely its bad capacitors on the Power supply very common problem with most models. You can get repair kits or replacement power boards from www.tvrepairworld.com

My best guess is that the card somehow got a surge.
Consider yourself lucky that only this card took the hit.
Since you have a surge protector, let me ask you this. Was the surge protector connected to a power socket which is earthed?

they generally come with a guaranteed protection, and as long as the surge protector is connected to a earthed socket, the manufacturer of the surge protector should be contacted and will generally reimburse or replace your product up to a predetermined maximum value.

If not, depending on the graphics card and the manufacturer's (in this case, PNY) warranty, you might be able to have it RMA'd.
Then again, in all honesty, PNY isn't the best when it comes to providing RMA service... So I wish you good luck, and I hope my answer has helped you :)

haveu formmated your disk & installed an operating system ie Win7/Xp it seems u have not got an operating system.

3 BEEPS --RAM HAS IT HAD A POWER FAILURE AND DO YOU HAVE A SURGE PROTECTOR IS THE LIGHT STILL ON TO SAY SURGE PROTECTED

from what you describe, they system will not shutdown. So try the following:

1. Boot to safe mode (F8 at boot) and then see if the system will reboot from the safe mode.
2. Boot to the Safe Mode again, Start RUN MSCONFIG, edit the startup group, (Basically uncheck all the items in the startup tab) reboot in the normal mode then see if it shutsdown. If it shutsdown normally, then start adding items back one at a time until you identify the items that were causing the items.

Well, to begin with, and FWIW, here's Dell's boot troubleshooter. A good place to start.
Leaving that behind, please see this article, and especially the 'supplemental reading" section. Also see here. and it's references.
I recommend you run chkdsk c: /f or /r (instructions here and here) to check your hard drive for corruption, and follow these steps (at least first 4) to scan for malware. That will establish a baseline for your system, and if you have further problems you can look toward hardware issues, driver conflicts and so forth. You may have some device that is sporadically failing and on its way out...
Also, if you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you install the xp recovery console (see here) before you have a situation where you really need it.
Finally, here's a somewhat dated but worthy boot troubleshooter that may help you diagnose the problem.

I hope this information allows you to resolve this issue. If you need further assistance, please post back with a comment to this thread.
If I've managed to answer your question or solve a problem, please take just a moment to rate this post....thanks!

how long it takes before it shuts down,

answer quickly or else i'll forget helping you.

there was a surge of power threw your system you need by an industrial power surge protector for your system now for the harddrive ive found that if you turn over and mount on static bag with box your harddrive should run long enough for you too collect and move data too another drive but never place on metal surface
i had the same problem i had a surge blew my hard drive a friend suggested turn over and then do a dump to another drive
after that i went out and purchased an industrial surge protector cost a pretty penny but has saved my system many times its called a belkin industrial surge protector about 80 dollars cheapies dont close quick enough hope this helped