Luckily I haven't had to post for a while due to computer gods smiling on me, but inevitibly I'm back!
Anyway, my little brother recently received a gift of an NCF (Dutch make) PC. Unfortunately it had been transported quite a distance in a car trunk. Things looked fine the first few boots, and then it needed to be switched on a few times before "engaging". All that seems to happen now is the HD light comes on for a few seconds and then winks out. The fan runs fine, and the CD still has power. The VDU never activates though. Very seldom it will make an Err Urr noise when turned on, but not always.
So, where do I start? Is it likely something's come loose or simply bust? Will I tell him to write it off and stick to his PS2? What a pity, PC games are much better!
A few pointers would be super.
Thanks all.

I would suggest (providing that your confident) that the first thing is to make sure that nothing has come loose, so look inside (not forgetting to earth yourself) generally jiggle things, and/or remove and re seat them. then check all outside connections and try again.

if still having trouble sylvanders flow charts should help.

Download them from here
www.erniek.eclipse.co.uk/downloads/sylvanderdiags.zip

Print them to leaf through.

Here's one route through them:

START UP TEST
1. Is the PC dead? No. [You have fans, lights, etc]
2. Did POST appear to run? No.
3. Were there any audible beeps? No. [a single short beep indicates successful completion of POST]
4. The Power-On Self-Test failed to complete. [NO POST]
[The video card is only enabled if POST completes so there will be no display]

NO POST
1. Are the PSU voltages correct? Check them if you can. If they are not you may have a faulty PSU. Assuming they ARE ok then:
2. Disconnect all peripherals and system adaptor cards except the keyboard and video card/monitor.
3. Does the POST now run? If it doesn’t then your system board [or something on it (video card, CPU, memory)] is faulty. If it does run then:
4. Re-connect the floppy disk drive and run advanced diagnostic software from a floppy disk.
[Get “TuffTest-Lite” from http://www.tufftest.com/free.htm or better if you can. This is a basic diagnostic program but still useful and very easy to use.]
5. Does the system board pass? If not then it is faulty. If it does pass then:
6. Switch off and re-connect ONE peripheral/adaptor card.
7. Does POST now run? If it doesn’t this last device connected is faulty and should be disconnected. If it does run the device should be tested using the diagnostics and if it fails is faulty and should be disconnected. If it passes it's ok and should be included.
8. Repeat from step 6 until all devices are tested, all faulty are excluded and all working are included, then re-test the system.

If you want to simplify the test for a first attempt at a fix you could assume the PSU is ok and leave out the tests with diagnostic software.

One thing I might suggest before to much testing is to remove the HDD from this machine and put it on as a slave in another. Start the good machine and save what is necessary from the hard drive from the bad machine. With all the bumping around, the hard drive may have gotten some bad spots. Continuing to boot and test this hard drive in the original machine will continue to damage it. Once this save process is done, replace it in the original machine and then do testing. I recently went through this with my laptop (gotta get a grip on my temper). I was able to save all personal files from the damaged HDD by “copy and paste” to a folder on my desktop HDD.

Good luck
Frank

Things looked fine the first few boots, and then it needed to be switched on a few times before "engaging". All that seems to happen now is the HD light comes on for a few seconds and then winks out. The fan runs fine, and the CD still has power. The VDU never activates though. Very seldom it will make an Err Urr noise when turned on, but not always.

Might be the power supply too. Just enough power for the lights but not enough to complete the boot. I suspect this because of the repeated "engaging", which has happened to me when a power supply was going bad.

As Vic 970 suggested, check to be sure it's plugged in securely to the motherboard and that your power cord is snug in back.

Kimbo