Hey Folks,
I'm hoping ya'll can help me troubleshoot a friend's computer. Recently his computer began failing to boot up. when power is on, the fans would start, but it would not continue to boot up.

At first I thought it would be the PSU, because the same thing happened to mine, and a new PSU did the trick. However for his, the new PSU did not resolve the boot up issue.

What would be your next steps for troubleshooting where the failure is? The computer is a Dell Dimension 2400. I could take the hard drive out and put it into my machine to make sure it works, but I don't know how to test the motherboard (however when power is on, the green LED on the board right next to the power connection is on).

I guess I could buy a new motherboard/RAM for it, but trying to get this fixed for as absolutely cheap as possible.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I would test the video card. I mean, I can't physically see what is going on but what happens a lot of the time with vga issues that the comp does boot but you have no way of telling.

If you can reset the cmos (not sure if you can on Dells) I would try that. Also, when you are testing do as minimal a setup as possible, i.e. mobo, proc, 1 stick of ram, psu, vga that is it.

Thanks faster3200,

well there's no independent video card in the system, I guess it's using on-board video of the MOBO.

Once the power is turned on, the fans boot up, and then you don't hear the usual hard drive 'crunching' as the bootup process continues...it starts to wind up, then 'stalls' and stops.

not sure how to reset the CMOS on this machine, or how they're normally reset on others to compare....