If you drained the battery until it died that might be the problem. My moto droid 1 was the same way. Some engineer thought it was cute to have the phone turn on when you plug it in. Problem with that is if the battery is completely dead there isn't enough juice left to turn on the phone. So it turns on for a few seconds, then dies, then sees it is plugged into power, then rinse and repeat. You are just going to have to wait until there is enough power in the battery to boot the phone fully. I highly suggest you do this with the AC charger. The USB charger takes longer.