Thank you for all those suggestions.  But I did unplug and replug all  
cables, cleaned and reseated the ram, video card, NIC card and modem.  
Tried a different monitor, but there were no messages of any type on  
that monitor either.  It was still completely black.  Finally I  
consulted a friendly neighborhood tech at Fry's Electronics who  
advised me to purchase a new motherboard.  Reluctantly I did, and now  
all is fine.  What could have caused such a young motherboard to bit  
the dust?  Now for some reason my recently exchanged 200GB hard drive  
is only reading 128GB???  What's next?!  I have packed it back into  
the box I received it in from Seagate only two weeks ago for yet  
another exchange. For now, I will take some time to get to know my  
New Intel iMAC while I work on getting that PC working smoothly again.

Regards,
Vanessa


On Jan 29, 2007, at 8:51 AM, Venkat Viswanathan wrote:

> Original post (clipped)
>
> <<<I've been using Win XP with AMD Sempron 2800+ processor, 512 MB  
> RAM & =
> 200 GB
> harddrive sucessfully for the last year. Now all of a sudden when  
> trying =
> to
> power up, nothing appears on monitor and computer shuts down after  
> only 1=
> 5
> seconds>>>>
>
> Hi,
>
> there could be many,many reasons BUT on the other hand being only a  
> year =
> old system we can possibly narrow it down.
>
> (1) check the cable connections between your hard drive and  
> motherboard.
>
> (2)check/reseat the RAM sticks
>
> (3) when you unplugged the monitor, did you get a msg on the screen  
> to th=
> e effect .."cable unplugged..."??
>
> (4) do you know whether you have "on board video" or a "seperate  
> video ca=
> rd"??
>
> NOTE: all the above suggestions assume you are comfortable working  
> inside=
>  the system (you have changed the power supply...). IF NOT pl post  
> back f=
> or further assistance.
>
> good luck---Venkat
>
>          PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
>                      visit our download web page at:
>                   http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml