Problems with boot up

[bigsteve]

Hey, I know there may be a similar thread amongst the wealth of info here but I have searched and not seen anything so a bit of adice would be great.

My PC has decided not to boot up. It starts up but gives no normal noises (single beep etc.) though it sounds like the hard drive is loading, the fans are on etc but no display on the monitor. The motherboard displays FF and nothing else i.e not going through a normal start up routine. I thought it may be the power unit so swapped cases but has made no difference. Could it be the motherboard or CPU?

However, when I put my hard drive this time into my parents PC (as I normally do when I's around home) my last sector on the hard drive is missing. It is not the one with the operating system (XP) loaded onto it, just a random one I keep photo's in - so could a dodgy sector prevent start-up?

Conversely, when I put my parents hard drive into my computer I do not get a beep but a display with the hard drive failing to boot and attempts (but fails) to boot in Safe mode.

I'm confused, this is a bit beyond my computer knowledge! Anyone help please,

Steve

 

[chelseafc2005]

I am nto sure it could be a faulty stick of ram though. As i said i am not that sure on the problem but what i am sure about is that another member on this forum will know the answer.

 

[bigsteve]

I hope there are some peeps out there with some advice...getting a little short of ideas!

Will look into the RAM though, cheers...I am assuming I can swap another stick into the motherboard and expect it to work!

Any other ideas?

 

[bigsteve]

I've swapped the RAM with my parents computer and it works fine - in fact I am currently using my parents graphics card and RAM at the moment...I hope this eliminates them!

What is next do we reakon...?

 

[muckshifter]

You ain't going to get nowhere swapping HDs from one PC to another ... XP don't like that, unless they are two identical PCs, and then it will please itself if it wants to work or not.

No Beep = normally caused by MB failure.

 

[bigsteve]

Righto, yeah gathered that swapping the hard drive wasn't going to work...I guess that would be too easy!

I'm just a little puzzled as to why there is a missing secotr on my hard drive (which is only a year old).

If I could just find out a way of know for sure before I bought a new MB...!