hi, the drive had about 22 rows of little spikes that fitted into the case's holes, if you get my drift!! Where is this scan tool and i'll scan my pc. the drive had ATA/IDE on the back of it. it was the friend i bought it off that said i had to get an IDE case. my pc is about 5-6 years old, advent with athlon 2.6 processor and i've added ram so it's 1024ish. you've been so helpful, thank you.

could it be that the drive was the wrong sort in the first place?

Hi ,

Most definitely a IDE HD . It's kaputt , you'd not have even got the thing to work in a SATA external closure as the connectors are all different . As said some good deals on Ebay , just have a shop around . A new 40 gig IDE drive shouldn't cost any more than £30 . Make sure to buy from an reputable seller that offers warranty . I think it's standard these days that a brand new HD is given a 3 year warranty .

Hi there, thanx for your help! I'll get one off ebay! I now have another problem! I've just been away for a week and password protected my pc. Don't normally but just think it might inconvenience someone if it got nicked, that's all. Using laptop now but when turned desktop on, my monitor won't go out of standby (orange light). I turned pc off then back on and still monitor won't go on! pc will not like this as if monitor went on, it would asking for my password but screen is just black glass! tried next door neighbour's monitor and still just says not connected...although it is!! Then goes to orange light again. If unplug and then plug in monitor, I get green light for a second and then goes back to orange!! Would it easier if I gave you a phone number as this process could take ages?!!!! Thanks and hope you get this!!!

Hi debandju ,

If the monitor will not boot it means it's not getting any power from the system . Normally it's the graphics card - I installed a new gfx card in a friends computer the other week and the monitor did the same . Try this :

Unplug the monitor from the power source and remove the VGA lead from both the monitor and VGA port on the computer .
If using a pci gfx card remove it and try the monitor on the onboard VGA port . If you are using a gfx card when you've removed it clean the connectors and on replacing make sure it is correctly inserted .

Good Luck

Hi there and thanks! What you've described sounds a little above my capabilities. My worry is that I put a password on the pc and this is causing all the problems and that's why the pc will not even boot up because I haven't been able to see a screen to type the password in! It just gets stuck on an orange light. I just tried an old pc from the garage and that wouldn't boot up either, or rather nothing happened with the monitor but pc could've been knackered anyway and may have struggled to recognise the monitor as old pc is only 166ghz! I do appreciate your help but would be worried to mess about with gfx cards! Thanks again, Julian