I have been given an HP Vectra vl420 computer. It was giving a friend some trouble freeing up at times so he purchase a new computer. The modem was removed and the harddrive was formatted to remove any thing on it.
I tried to turn it on using a new monitor and the monitor does not show a display, I have a recovery disc but the drives are dead.
Is this a BOIS problem?
Will the compter start with a bad computer 3 volt battery.? And how do I load an OS if the drives are dead?
Any BEEPS on startup ?
Did he remove the RAM when he gave it to you ? ...Matter of fact did he remove the hard drives ? ?
If you're getting no signal and no beeps on startup i'd check the items above first...
Then borrow a working power supply of the same or greater wattage and swap it in there to see if it's the culprit...
It should still run even if the CMOS battery is dead but it wont hurrt to replace it ...about 5 bucks at Wally World PART # CR 2032.

Yes, it beeps once at the end of startup and then sits there.
The ram is still installed, I have pulled the battery but did not get one today. I will pick one up tomorrow. I have the recover disc but are useless with out the drives. The hard drive was removed and erased and put back. I will check the out put of the power suppy tomorrow afternoon when I return from work. The hard drive is a 40 gig, Seagate. Thje lights on the front of the comuter are on except the CD rom drives are not on.What method did he use to wipe the drives ? ?
He may have just ran FDisk but forgot to run format.
You can grab a WinME bootdisk from bootdisk.com...double clik the DLoad with a clean floppy in and it creates a boot floppy.
Then re-boot the machine...at the A: prompt type format C: /u and hit Enter...
At the end it will ask for a volume name hit Enter for none.
The machine should now be able to run the recovery CD's...I have the restore disc for the computer, But since ALL of the drives are dead it is useless at the moment. also I do not get a promp because the screen is dead .I saw "where anything will " is describing a lot of the same thing I am experiencing. I disconnected the IDE cable and was able to open and close doors also. So it should narrow down the power supply is ok , shouldnt it.?Not neccessarily...best way to determine PSU issues is to borrow a known good one of the same wattage or greater and swap it in there...Patio,
I added a new ram today and still nothing. I decide to remove the CPU. It was stuck to the fan when I removed the fan. I pried it loose and remounted it in the motherboard and reinstalled the cooling fan.
IT WORKS!!!
So I then reloaded my software through the recover disc. Thank you for responding to my questions . Hope this helps someone else.