I'm having a problem. We've got an old pc that has been stored away. Before we did this we thought we had downloaded all the pictures we needed from it. Sadly my wofes mother has just passed away and we noticed that a file of pictures had not been downloaded and was still on the PC. I have got the PC out and set it up. This is where it all goes poop. It starts as normal then, after initially truning green, the monitors power light turns to amber. I have unplugged the monitor from the pc and receive a 'no signal message' so I am presuming the monitor is fine. Is there anything I can do, that might be simple and I am missing?

sounds like soemthing has gone and if its old and hasnt been used in a long time it could be anything. if this is really a big emergancy i think you should strip the pc and take out the hard drive and add it to another so that you can pull off the files only problem is if the hard drive has been formated in ntfs and you have use the my documents folder to store the documents. then im afraid your going to have to try and get the computer fixed cos the file system wont let you pull off the files. having a look at the post my gut feeling is the graphics card has gone but then again you need to test the monitor. all text needs typos. There there for the reader to find,to distract them from the total lack of content. google it! wasnt the answer to the question i asked so dont be dense and give me that reply!

There's nothing wrong with the monitor. I suggest you re-seat all cards and cables in the PC including removing and re-seating the ram. See if you can get any POST beeps out of it when you try to start up. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

Slave the drive either in another machine or use an external enclosure and search for the files from there ? Keep the old stuff running

Slaving the drive to another PC is probably the best plan. However, when electronic devices are left idle for an extended time, connection surfaces tend to oxidize. Reseating the connectors will quite often scrape off the oxidation and allow the device to work again. I would try reseating the motherboard power connector, with power removed, of course.