Need Help With My PC; It May Never Boot Again! Help!

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Before I blow some cash on a new build-it-yourself PC from Newegg.com, please help me with my current system!

My current system is a build-it-yourself Desktop PC given to me for free by a friend because I couldn't afford to buy my own at the time. How nice was that?! Very nice!

The hardware in it is at least 3 years old and I haven't had it for even a year. Here is what it is doing. Let's see if any of you fellow Aspies are smart enough to figure this one out!:

Okay, I turn on the computer. The light on the DVD Burner flashes and the red light indicating that the hard disk is spinning lights up bright red. The green power light comes on. And then, the light on the DVD burner flashes for a few seconds and then stops for a few seconds. The hard drive light remains bright red. It does this over and over again repeatedly and the computer will not start the boot sequence. The light on the monitor stays orange, and there is no picture on the screen. The computer simply will not boot, which if I can't boot it, then it is utterly useless.

Is my PC shot all to hell and I need to buy a new one or is it fixable? If so, how do I fix it?

I am going to buy a new PC by Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) anyway, but maybe I can temporarily fix the one I have now until then, so I can wait for the great sales! Please help me save some of my moolah (money)! !!

Here is a link to the wishlist PC on Newegg that I plan to buy and build myself. Note that it is a very basic sub-$1,000 PC. I intend for it to stay that way. Please don't encourage me to spend more of my moolah on a computer because I don't have the money right now!! ! I can always spend some more money later on upgrades and the like; I am 99% positive that the current configuration is adequate to fit my needs, so let's keep it like el cheapo, okee day?! Thank you for understanding.

Could be the power supply, the memory, or the motherboard. Possibly the videocard.

Look up the motherboard manufacturer, there should be some info about what the different color lights/patterns/beeps/whatever mean.

then replace the cheapest parts first

Disconnect things one by one, the floppy drive, cdrom drive, hard drive, sound card or any other adapter cards. It might be the videocard also if you have one, so its worth testing a different one if you have one. try to get it to boot with as little connected as possable.


so that you are left with just the power supply, motherboard, cpu and memory connected. test one stick of memory at a time. If it still does not work then its one of these major components and its worth getting a new pc.
You dont need the hard drive connected to get a display on the screen btw

Sparkman's got it: try booting as simply as possible-- without DVD, extra drives or any peripherals hooked up.

Also: you didn't mention whether you were getting POST (Power On Self Test) beeps or not. Not beeping, or more than one beep can be a valuable diagnostic tool. If you are getting just one POST beep, try clicking away repeatedly on the F8 key. This will get you into "safe mode", which will prevent loading sometimes-faulty drivers. Once finished booting in safe mode, you can often reboot right into normal mode.

POST test could be turned off. you can do that with some computers. As said, press the "f8" key repeatedly. you might get SOMEwhere.

One simple thing it could be is a bad boot sector, if its getting that far. Thats a pretty easy fix, but we need to know if the 'f8' works or not.

Too late! I already ordered me a new puter! I really wanted a new puter anyway. The one I have now sucks: 1.1Ghz AMD processor, 512MB RAM, 2 80GB PATA Hard Drives.

Once again, here is a link on Newegg to the new system I ordered. Awesome I say, at least compared to the system I have now.