deejay100six

Hi Guys, Spent quite a bit of time now fiddling around with old computers but now i have a real one to fiddle with.

It belongs to my neice and i said i would take a look so i am out to impress her.

Tried searching for solution here but obviously the search forum facility is another one of them things on the site that needs fixing.

Its a Packard bell desktop with a celeron D processor, XP home edition, not sure yet if there is an o/s disk, there is a sticker on it with serial key but if it comes to reinstall might be difficult as my disk is XP Pro, might be able to borrow one.

Power it up and the on/off button is flashing, the light above start button is flashing red when apparently it should be blue, take the side off, flashing led top right corner of motherboard, ticking sound which seems to be coming from hdd, cpu and psu fans both operational.

Tried cmos reset, no effect and i noticed that the led on mobo has gone dim compared to first time i tried it.

The hdd is a Seagate barracuda 160gb and a brief google says its kaput.

Where do i start, do i need to start dismantling to get full system specs or should i just bin the hdd?

Just been thinking got 2 pc's here both barracuda hdd, a 120gb and other one much smaller but cant remember, Perhaps i should try one of those in it but would need advice about that with it not being my machine don't wanna risk breaking anything else.

Deejay