Hi everyone,
I'm new here and I've been having a lot of problems with my computer and I'm not sure what to do without going out and buying new hardware for it.. which I may have to do...

Here's my story: (sorry it's sorta long..)

We assembled our computer ourselves and everything was
working perfectly until a couple things happened.
(Both of these incidences occurred while running a
demo of windows 64-bit)

1) my brother tried unscrewing something while the
computer was on (I know.. bad idea) anyways he accidentally hit the hard drive with the screwdriver, which then caught on fire and we don't know if it damaged anything else. After replacing the hard drive, occasionally the desktop would not show up after logging on but otherwise everything seemed alright.

2) There was a power surge and the computer shut down. Since then, I have been unable to view the bios or boot screen, but it would still always boot up.

Recently I tried installing vista home premium (64-bit) and it seemed to work fine except I still could not see anything when booting up.
So, I tried removing the battery for a couple minutes and replacing it and now it won't start at all. It turns on fine, the regular beep at startup, everything sounds fine, except there's a blank screen and it remains that way.
I then tried clearing the CCMOS but that did nothing, so now I come to you hoping that someone may be able to suggest something.

My Computer:
Abit KN8 Ultra Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 Processor
1024MB RAM
Radeon x800GTO Graphics Card

Is the hard drive active at startup?

If so wait till it appears to stop and then try the little Reset button on the tower.

If that doesn't help remove the RAM and power on. It should BEEP BEEP BEEP etc.

Then reseat one stick of RAM and try again.

Hey, thanks for the quick reply.
The hard drive does not seem to be active at startup and I have tried reseating the RAM but it did not help. Do you think this could be a problem with the motherboard?

If you power up with no RAM does it BEEP at you?

If yes then the motherboard is working up to that point. At least doing what it's supposed to.

If no then it places serious doubt on the motherboard.

Also does the air coming off the CPU fan get warm?

Without the RAM, the computer does beep and the air comping off the CPU fan does not get warm

Ok so I doubted that the graphics card or the monitor was the problem and I was wrong. We're using an LCD monitor using a DVI connection which worked previously but now does not. When I tried switching from the DVI to VGA it worked again and I can now see the bios screen and everything. But, I don't know whether it's the monitor or the graphics card. What's your opinion? And, do you know any way to test which it is? We do not have another graphics card with a DVI output. I'm very happy to have my computer back, even at a lower resolution..
Thanks for all your help.

How exactly did you switch from DVI to VGA?

Does the card have both ports?

If so then you switched monitors?

They make DVI/VGA adapter plugs wherein you could test the DVI monitor on a VGA port.

The card has both ports and I just learned from my brother that the card won't output digitally until windows starts so that's why I couldn't see anything while booting up. And, after I removed the battery for a couple minutes, the computer waited for input before resuming with the boot up so that's why it never started. So, basically, there's nothing wrong with my computer at all. I simply did not know enough about our graphics card.
Thanks so much for all your help though. I appreciate it.