im sorry that I cant give more specifics about my PC, but it is a gateway pentium 4 with windows xp.

I was on it a few days ago and it suddenly did what looked like restarting, but then it just stayed in limbo sending no info to the screen and i COULD hear the fan running. I was able to get the cd tray to open and close but thats about it. the power button was doing nothing.
so as a last resort, i pulled the power chord from the back. when i plugged it back in, it went straight back into the limbo state with the fan running and no signal to the screen. I unplugged and re-plugged everything from the tower and replaced them but ended up in the same limbo state. i am currently at a loss of how to remidy this.
Would the best option be to bring it to a repair shop?
thank you so much for any help. I have a lot of files that i would hate to loose.

-SaraIt's hard to diagnose without more info but if it still isn't starting you're first objective should be trying to save your data...the more you try right now to get it started the more harm you could be doing to your files.

If you are familiar with removing/installing hardware then power down the machine and remove the HDD.

You will want to hook it up to a known working machine as a slave DRIVE to see if you can retrieve the data...

After this post back with any other info on the machine and what happened prior to this and hopefully we can assist at getting you back up and running.to be honest, i would have no idea how to do that.
do you think bringing it to a repair shop could cause more problems than its worth?May be something as simple as a new power supply. If you are not comfortable working on this, I understand, and a local computer shop may be a great idea. I would be reluctant to bin a Pentium 4 with a legal copy of Windows. You may also just want to talk among your friends and colleagues to see if there is someone with a bit of computer savvy...it's not as complicated a procedure as it SOUNDS but the person should have a well rounded background...ok, a friend of mine who is fairly smart with these things is going to take a look at it in a few days. ill report back after.Best of Luck to you...oy. how odd
i took the pc to my friend and for whatever reason, everything worked for him and has been working since.
i am backing up all of my files now, but thank you for all of your advice.This would be a great time to consider getting an imaging program that will make a restorable image of your complete hard drive...i use Acronis True Image.

Coming that close to losing everything has a tendency to make ONE REALISE good backups are very valuable indeed...Quote from: sararoseb on May 14, 2007, 05:08:59 PM

so as a last resort, i pulled the power chord from the back. when i plugged it back in, it went straight back into the limbo state with the fan running and no signal to the screen. I unplugged and re-plugged everything from the tower and replaced them but ended up in the same limbo state.

Quote from: sararoseb on May 14, 2007, 05:08:59 PM

so as a last resort, i pulled the power chord from the back. when i plugged it back in, it went straight back into the limbo state with the fan running and no signal to the screen. I unplugged and re-plugged everything from the tower and replaced them but ended up in the same limbo state.

Please tell me you powered down the machine before unplugging it.