Well, my computer will not boot. One time I shut it down and when, the next day, I hit the power button, my CD-ROM lights came on, my fans came on, my motherboard light came on, but it didn't beep and turn on my monitor. By the way, there is no beeping at all. I kept hitting reset until it finally beeped and turned on. I shut it down again (dumb idea) and now it will not boot at all. I bought everything new 5 months ago, it was professionally installed and it doesnt start up at all. I suspect it is the RAM which is new. I have not touched one thing since they installed it. I even tryed reseting the CMOS and that didn't help. Please help. I am a musician who has 7 new songs not backed up on the HD. I dont want to lose them. Thanks again! My specs: Athlon XP 2200 512MB RAM 80GB HD GeForce FX5200 Hope that helps.

Shaun, not much to go on but; 1st have you put the old ram back in; you said the ram was new. 2nd Your info should be fine, if it's not the HDD and it doesn't sound like it. You can remove the HDD and hook it up as a slave to a working computer to get your info off. 3rd Have you contacted the professional that installed your system?

Not yet, if I do and they try to fix it, they will charge rediculously on labor.... I read somewhere else that it could be the video card. Should I call them anyway?

I have already spent 800 dollars more than I should on labor, new parts, etc and the comp is only worth 400 dollars. Hmmmmm...

You should have gotten some sort of warranty and if not... in 5 months all goes bad, I'd pitch a fit. It works some times. Also if you do bring in the system either remove your HDD or get something in writting that they WILL NOT FORMAT AND RELOAD YOUR HDD, you do want your song, right? It could be anything; most likely it's mobo/cpu/ram, could be a bad NIC or modem also. If your not comfortable mucking about in the computer don't do it.

I really appreciate the help. I will give them a call and try to convince them that it was a hardware problem not something I caused, which it wasn't anyway. Computer places try to blame problems on people because most people don't know a thing about computers. Last time they did some labor, they had me sign a paper with them saying "sign it to give us the confirmation that it was ok to format your HD" when I looked it over after I paid the bill, it was a paper saying they can do labor on my computer and I have to pay by the quarter hour. I don't know if I trust them but I will ask around a little longer then I will take it to them. I really appreciate the help. Thanks again. Shaun

Shaun, That REALLY sounds like a SHADY place, I have never ever heard of a place that doesn't charge just flat rate on labor, parts are extra. If you want to try it yourself, you can start by removing the new ram, if you have more than one stick try one only then the other one only, see if it boots, then one by one remove all the cards(leaving the video for last) trying to boot the system after each one is removed, remember to either rest your arms on the METAL part of the case or hold on to a METAL part of the case; this will ground you and keep ESD from making "flaky" chips out of good ones. If the system boots after the removal of one or all of the cards it's a start.