scaramanga

no its not mate

cheers mate ... i will probably have to take u up on the offer.. if u can recover photos and files, what do u recover them to, is it to a disc or on to a flash drive?? if i cant fix the pc which looks likely then will have to bite the bullet and prob get a laptop

its the one with the ribbon type cable

no beeps that i can tell and yes the fan stays on all the time

can i see this without removing the hard drive or do i need to take it out??

its about 5 years old and yes it does make a few noises. the fan starts to run and i get a few noises that i asume are the hard drive.the only display i get is a screen with collums of numbers and list of things like IDE Cntrlr....Multimedia Device...USB 1.0/1.1 OHCI Cntrlr and so on!!

thanks chaps. i am in southampton stevo. i am currently using the daughters notebook. i will have a go at trying to fix it or if all else fails get that docking unit for the hard drive.

tried that as well... there was lots of dust inside. have brushed and blown as much out as i could . is it worth trying to take out hard drive and give that a bit of a clean up??

pc has died ... it wont start up. i have tried the f8 safe mode start up, but still nothing happens. it starts to make all the right noises...the fan starts and i can hear the hard drive trying to do something. its running windows xp and is probably about 5 years old.as usual i cant find the original xp disc to be able to try a re-boot. i have lots of family photos on the hard drive that i dont want to lose, if it is terminal and i need to replace the pc what would i need to do to be able to salvage the contents of the old hard drive. is it just a matter of removing it and getting some sort of lead to be able to transfer data??

even corp has seen the light

spot on!

got the album free with the NOTW. just got some stickers for the boy at 50p each, 5 in each pack.

an old favourite.

Kelvin to lift the trophy if we win. not Dean Hammond.