My cousin built his own computer, and lately when you restart it there is no POST beeps, all CD drives are checked but not the floppy (normally it does check the floppy drive), and that's it. The monitor does not turn on, nothing else happens. All drives have power though. You have to press the reset button and normally that works.

For the last few days, nothing at all will get the computer to boot. He seems to think it's the video card, but I don't think that's it. Any help?

Sounds like the floppy drive has become disconnected - either the power cable or (more likely) the IDE ribbon cable. Get your cousin to open the case and check these connections. Many PCs are set to not boot up if a floppy drive cannot be detected.

I checked and all cables all seem to be connected and seated properly.

You could try resetting the BIOS to the factory default settings, in case something has got a bit confused. To do this, disconnect from the mains power and then remove the motherboard battery. Leave it off for 2 minutes, then put it back in and power on again.

Is the system speaker still connected to the motherboard correctly?

Has the PC been moved or has anything been altered inside just before it stopped booting properly?

He moved the PC when we moved in, which was about 2 months ago. When we first moved in the PC would not boot either. He said that started before we moved in. Someone told him it was the motherboard, I thought it was the hard drive. He replaced the hard drive and then it worked fine. Now we have this problem. After we moved into this place the PC has not been moved. The speaker is still connected to the motherboard and I tried what you said about disconnecting the battery, but it didn't help. Do you think it might be the video card like he thought? I just couldn't see how that would stop it from booting properly.

Definitely sounds like a loose connection. Forget about the drives for the time being though. A PC does not need any drives connected to go through POST and show something on the video card. What it does need is power going to the motherboard, processor working, some RAM and a video card and that's it. So I'd check:

1. PSU to motherboard power block is connected properly
2. If its a modern PC that the four prong PSU-processor power block is attached
3. Reseat RAM
4. Reseat graphics card

That's enough to get beeps and a picture. If you still don't get anything you'll have to try replacement components one by one for CPU, GFX and RAM. If none of that works then your motherboard is probably out fo action.

None of that worked. I guess I'll just let him replace the video card and see where that takes us.

Thanks for all your help guys!

OK, keep us POSTed on progress