Hardware

oops

that could be what was causing it to run slow. Should be able to find a replacement,
Amazon may have a listing. Now, for the optical disc drive, you may be able to VERY
CAREFULLY pry the door open with something like a paper clip or small screwdriver...
use gentle force, not sledgehammer strength, and try to pull the tray out. The other
method would be since you're probably going to be opening the case to replace the
power supply, you could remove the CD Rom drive and the disc from there.

But I do agree with Wiz that the Power Supply s likely to have died and gone to Silicon Heaven.

You'll need to open the case and being a Pentium 4 CPU it will have a ATX Power Supply so that is no biggie to replace unless the case is a Custom Job that uses a very small Power Supply. If that's the case those things where always marginal to start with at the best of times and personally I wouldn't bother if you have one of those.

As for the CD most have a hole in the front which you can push a unbent Paper Clip into to release the drawer and then pull the draw open when it springs and remove your Disc. You can also push the drawer closed again and it will lock closed.

Of course some CD Drives didn't have the Hole in them but mostly they came after the P4's where replaced so hopefully it shouldn't be a problem.

However just check to see if there is a switch on the Power Supply and click it over a couple of times. If it has no resistance it's failed and this is a fairly common thing to happen but unless you have experience with working with Mains Electricity you should replace the Power Supply not the switch which needs soldering in anyway.

Col

Both of you guys rock big time. Gladly, I managed to retrieve my precious Windows XP SP3 CD from this dead computer using a lady's hair clip, this dead computer is going to the dump after I smash the hard drive just to make sure no personal info could be retrieved from it. Thanks a bunch masters!!!