steps for troublesooting

1. You hire someone to fix the issue.

2. You pay the repair man.

Depends on your experience if it's limited the above answer is part way correct, however I would add a third option

[b]Pay someone to teach me how to do this![/b]

If you are willing to spend the time and effort with the possibility of no result you can always start off with the Ultimate Boot CD available at

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

or if you are not even seeing a POST screen you can download the Beep Codes from the BIOS makers Web Site or the white paper available here at TR. It's called something like Beep Code Error Messages.

From this point on it's going to start to cost you money as you'll need some tools even a basic Power Supply Tester which is relatively cheap will be required and you'll need to step up from that point on depending on what it is that you want to do and the tools range from a Digital Multi Meter to a multi trace Digital Storage Oscilloscope.

You'll also require a magnifying light to examine M'Boards closely as well as other components and the list just grows from there.

Col