My uncle's computer troubles

[CrazeD]

Hey, my uncle is having a bit of computer trouble:

"If anyone can help out here I would really appreciate it...I have two computers that were running and then died. I have run out of ideas to try to fix them. The first puter is an AMD Thunderbird 800mhz, 768mb ram, 300w ps, Abit AT7 MB, Hercules 3D Prophet II MX video card, Windows XP Pro. Puter has run fine every day for 2 years. Upon starting it, all we got was a flashing _ symbol in the upper left of the screen. We tried cold crashing it and restarting it, but now all we get is "No Input". I've changed monitors (ones that I know work), changed video cards, I even installed a new FIC KT400 Pro Socket 462 XP 3200+ ATX Motherboard w-Lan,Snd and 256mb new PC3200 DDR400 Ram. I still have the same problem...NO INPUT.


Second puter has the same problem. Specs are AMD Athlon 1400 (1.4ghz), 768mb ram, NEW 350w ps, Abit KR7A MB, Hercules 3D Prophet II MX video card, Windows XP Pro. This puter is a new/used build. MB, CPU, and ram are used. They came from a running puter. System was running fine. I shut it down for the night, the next day I tried to start it. All I got was "No Input". I tried changing monitors, changed the video card (tried AGP and PCI), all with no luck.

I've run out of things to try. Anyone got an idea?"

Anyone got any suggestions for me to pass along?

 

[MrCoffee]

Reset the CMOS, could of been a power surge or something.

 

[CrazeD]

I already suggested that. I also told him to look for bad capacitors. I'll see what he says when he comes online.

 

[Jby]

The flashing _ suggests that it was looking through boot devices and couldn't find anything to boot from - probably a corrupted,damaged and inaccessible harddrive - I've had this problem quite a few times befoer and once it was unfixable.

But sounds to me like it was definately a power surge, they both seem to have went down within a short period with the same symptoms and on the first computer the only thing you didn't list changing is the PSU - suggests its buggered.