[RESOLVED] another computer won't start

Sounds like you have eliminated the DVD player as being the problem. Has anybody been messing with your Bios? What is your bios set to boot to. It may be that your hard drive just died on you. I have a hard drive go bad about every 5 years or so. Do you have a spare one around that you can reformat and throw in to see if that's the problem? I wouldn't buy a new one just yet because if your computer wont even boot from CD even when you have your XP CD in there, that kind of discounts a hard drive problem too... I'm leaning towards a Bios or a mother board or some other kind of hardware failure. See if there's other things that you can disconnect. And not to offend because I don't know your level of expertise, but make sure you didn't bend any of the pins when you plugged your DVD player back in.

When you turn it on, can you hear if the hard disk heads are moving. Maybe it's the monitor, or display adapter. If you can hear the diskheads accessing the disk, it could be booting, you don't seem to getting a signal from the display adapter to the monitor. Is the disk access light on steady without blinking?

Guys,

Many thanks for pitching in and helping.

I'm definitely not offended, I can just change a hard drive etc but that's about my limit! I don't believe I've bent anything as the problem just happened after a normal shut down and nothing has been touched for months

When I turn on with the dvd connected, both the dvd greeen and orange lights remain on and don't extinguish. Also the pc green power and yellow processor lights stays on. All lights constant and no flickers.
When I disconnect the dvd and cd strap from the mother board, thus excluding them, still the same, except of course their lights don't display.

I imagine it can't be the monitor etc , when it can display messages eg no signal.

Hard drive was new about 9 mths ago.

With regards to the bios, it was set to boot from disc as after I put in my new hard drive I booted from the xp disc. If it is normal practice to switch it back to boot from pc after then I would have probably have done that but I honestly can't remember.

Hope this helps a little bit more and once again thanks for the time and effort

if your monitor is displaying no signal then it sounds like a graphics card issue. If anything else had died you should still see the POST test attempting to run.

Try removing the card and inserting an old one (or borrow a friends)

Does the computer beep when you turn it on, if so what kind of beeps does it ommit?

I too would like to know whether, and if so, in what manner, the machine beeps on startup. If there are beeps, what are their properties - length, duration, sequence?

Some other ideas -

If the monitor is displaying a "No signal" message, check the connection between the monitor and the machine.

A faulty video adapter, as mentioned, can prevent boot, as the system may hang waiting for the device to initialize, which it never does - thats a very real possibility. As mentioned, try substituting a known-good video adapter and see what happens. Even without installing the device's own drivers, the machine should boot into VGA mode if that was the problem.

Another possibility - though remote - is a faulty floppy drive - try disconnecting that and attempting a boot.

When the optical drives are present and connected, will either of them spin up if loaded with a disk? Can you hear them do so?

Have you tried booting from a floppy - Win XP requires 6, which can be downloaded, or created on any other Win XP machine (though you want to use the appropriate set of disks determined by which version - Home or Pro - of WinXP you have).,

Even a Win9X boot floppy will, if the machine will boot at all, get you into DOS

You say the monitor shows no signal from the PC. Does the monitor actually display "No Signal from PC", or are you saying that your signal light (light only) is not turing green??

Timber has a good idea about booting from a floppy. It would be interesting to see if it would do so. It doesn't really matter what you boot to ... DOS, WIN95/98. What you're really trying to determine is if the system is hanging on the video adapter, or any other hardware device.

Guys,

Once again many thanks for coming to the rescue.

Yes; dead right it was the graphics card.

Many thanks for the great support.

Rick