My son took this pc to college, didn't use it for 3 months, now it has a 'no signal' sign on the monitor. I have tried other monitors, and can hear it starting up for a minute or so, although no beep. I used svideo cable from pc to monitor and the dvd plays, although that probably has nothing to do with this issue. Any ideas?

Open up the case and re-seat the video card, that is assuming it has a video card and not a built in video system. While you are there try re-seating everything you can, memory, power connections, hard disk connections. The noise you hear will be the hard disk initialising. That will happen as soon as power is applied regardless of the state of the computer. It is not uncommon for connections get a bit iffy in a computer that has been idle for some time. Stuart

If it normally gives a single beep when powering up and now it doesn't, that means it's dead and the motherboard is not working. All that is needed to give that beep is a working power supply and motherboard. Of course a defective device plugged into the motherboard can kill it. A Google search for "Troubleshooting a PC" will turn up some help, but if you have a compatible power supply, swapping it might be a good first step. Or you could just try removing all power and reseating the motherboard power connector. For what it's worth to XP users: When you click on the 'Command Prompt' you are just causing the 'Command prompt' to be displayed. This prompt gives you access to the 'NT Virtual DOS Manager'.

I have removed the all cards, cleaned and reinstalled them, reseated all connections that I could, with no results. If it is the motherboard, I don't understand why I can go in to the computer through the dvd drive and see my programs and documents etc. I am using a flat panel tv/monitor that has the option to choose tv, component, dvd, or pc. I choose dvd and can see my stuff on the computer.

Well, the moron has solved his problem. I had forgotten this computer had another video card installed and had my monitor plugged in to the original outlet from the stock card. As soon as I plugged into the added video card it worked. Thanks for your replies. I'm just glad the computer is alright.