Hello again,


I'd forgotten the paperclip maneuver, which opened the CD drive and allowed the CD to be removed.
The light on the DVD drive continued to blink.
 
Inside the box, I reseated the memory and found that the computer booted afterwards, so the problem was a simple matter of a loose connection. 
 
Thanks to those who replied with helpful advice.
 
Ron
 
 
original question:

> I have an elderly desktop with  an AMD Athlon  XP 2000 Mhz cpu which refuses to boot, and the DVD drive emits eight blinks from its light before the machine switches off. The fan works, however. Does this mean the video card is not working, or is there some other problem? Also, what would be a way to extract a CD from the CD drive, which does not open?
> THanks for any suggestions,
> 
> Ronald Smith
> 
> 
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