1.8 mhz compaq, have not open the guy up in awhile, so no tampering has been done. the box runs linux and i did recently get an iPod, i'm not sure how that could effect anything but it is the only change so here is the problem:

so i rarely restart the boy, i mean its linux who needs to? but i did about a week ago and it went to the boot splash screen (the COmpaq logo and then nothing no line to tell me to press a button to get into bios setup nothing so i restarted again manually and it booted i thought nothing of it.

well today i rebooted, thought i would try out a new distro (the proMepis beta2) and same problem, this time its not going anywhere, if i press any buttons the splash screen goes away and compaq in text appears in the lower right hand corner thats it. i can also press ctrl+alt+del to restart, other nothing. i can't access bios setup and can't boot anything.

any idea what the problem could be? i tried to give it time keeping it on with out toughing anything but nothing just the boot screen, and tried to keep it off for awhile and cool it down but nope still happens.

any help would greatly be appreciated.

Lee

The first thing I would do is look at the capacitors on the motherboard (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=25482). If they looked normal, check to be sure all your internal fans are spinning up when you power on. The only other thing I can think of right now to do is strip it down to a barebones setup (motherboard, power supply, cpu with heatsink and fan, video card and one stick of RAM). If it will boot from there, add components one at a time until it craps out again. If not, have you got any spare known good parts you could swap out?

yeah i feared it was a hardware problem, this isn't my specialty, i'll open her up and try your advice, thanks for the help, i'll reply back with the results.

Lee

opened it up cleaned some dust away and bam worked like a charm, i wish it were always that easy, thanks for the help.

Lee