a buddy dropped of an hp pavilion 7935 at my house, minus a hard drive and ram. he cliamed the onboard graphics card went out. when I turn it on, I dosn't post at all.
just sits there.
I installed a pc1 graphics card, no luck still just sits there, with the fans spinning.

I have reseated all the cables, cleared the cmos by removing the battery and tried dells solution of hitting f1 then f5 then f10

I do not have another computer to take the processor out and try it there.
It does go out and find and light up the keyboard. but that is where it stops.

I do not want to buy a new motherboard only to have it be a processor, and do not want to by a processor only to have it be the motherboard.

Is there any way to determine what the cause of this is,, processor or motherboard ?

"minus a hard drive and ram"

Uh, you're not gonna get it to do anything without RAM

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz
512MB PC3200
Asus Ti4800SE 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro

jam is correct: you need power a mobo a cpu RAM and a video device to get any POST.

www.linuxteens.com

Oh,, forgot to mention,,
added two sticks of pc 133 512
then tried 1 stick of pc100 32

also tried with a western digital hard drive
a maxtor hard drive
even a scsi card,, and hard drive

still no post
no beeps as well,, but there is no case speaker in this model.
added speakers,, to the speaker port,, no beeps either

Some of these machines use proprietary RAM. You've GOT to go to the support site, or otherwise search the 'net, and find out what RAM is compatible.

ANY motherboard should be able to post and at least get into the bios with ONLY

The keyboard, power supply,

The motherboard, cpu, and RAM,

A video card, if not onboard, and a monitor.

One Comcraps, some of which envolve the bios on a special hidden partition on the hard drive, you won't get "into" the bios, but it will at least post.