my moms piece of crap dell desktop isnt bootong up for her. When i tried to fire it up, the windows XP logo came up with the loading bar chuging along, and then i would see a message "no signal" Then it would give me the black screen with start up options- safe mode, normal mode, etc.. All of the start up modes would result in 'no signal'

hmm?? what does no signal mean?? no signal from the hard drive?

Typically "no signal" would be a message from your monitor.

-spence

yep the monitor isn't plugged in all the way.

really? even though i was seeing the windows XP stuff?

When you boot - choose to boot with the option for VGA mode - this should run the basic resolution and get you in - then you need to figure out what's up with the VC - drivers? hardware fail? Other recently installed software?

Could also be an issue that is resolved if you use the option to start with last known good configuration...

john i tried booting up in all of the modes that they offered, and each time i was granted with the windows XP logo and the moving green loading bar, then that no signal sign would show up.

next time i am over there i will make sure all the wires are happy wires not mixed up angry wires :hihi:

when you boot the computer get into bios by pressing the F2 button... stay in it for about 5 minutes.. that should be long enough to rule out the monitor... DO NOT GO INTO ANY OF THE SETTINGS...

If that goes ok shut down the computer and monitor and reseat the video card if the machine has one, if not then reseat the system memory... use a little caution when reseating any cards or memory.. no force should be needed... if so then you are doing something wrong...

Just remember which slots you took the memory out of and which direction they went and you will be ok...

EDIT:
Should also note that when you do reseat the system memory do so 1 slot at a time if the computer has more then 1 memory dimm...
For instance:
Computer has 512 megs of ram made up of 2 sticks of 256, install back 1 stick at a time then reboot the computer to rule out bad memory... ESD is an electronic nightmare and can affect a component down the road as far as several years...

If there's a video card problem, the real issue could also be the power supply.

Also, it's possible part of the video board went bad. So it looks like it's booting then tries to switch to the high-rez mode and flips out.

-spence

Thanks guys, i wont be there until next saturday night, but i will try all of these suggestions. :D