My Mom's computer...

[lilith]

Okay, I did as you guys suggested and I cleaned out the insides and re-seated everything. That didn't help much but it sure did need it..... I checked the fans and both seem to be working fine. The fan in the power supply was not working at all though. I installed a new power supply. That seemed to help but he problem is still basically the same. When you push the on button, everything lights up like it is working but it won't start booting to Windoze until at least the third try. Is this the hard drive failing? She has backed everything up just in case....

[dragonash]

try putting the hard drive in an internal enclosure (just dont close it).

See if it successfully slaves on the first try. Also, try to listen for the harddrive starting up. (which is why i said to not close the enclosure)

Thats one way of finding out if the HD is failing.
When the HD does boot up, is it noisy?

[lilith]

Yes, it makes loud clicking sounds for a bit before it starts. Then it is pretty quiet.

[Ninjahedge]

Click skitter or click-a click-a click-a......

The click things are usually bad if they are not followed by what sounds like a lot of motion and skittering (movement of the reading head while the disks are spinning.

I had something similar recently in that my machine would not get past the BIOS boot screen.

have you hit DEL on startup to try and get into the Bios and see if it sees everything?

My machine was just having a problem where the new memory I got was not seated right, so t would take 3 or 4 shots to start it up, and I would get random reboots. I started experimenting, placing one stick in at a time with no problems and now I have both back in there and working (and no errors on a cursory memtest...).

I would suggest you try getting into the Bios, listening to the HD a bit more, and possibly even replacing the HD.

Oh, and also realizing that you could probably get her a new "clearance" box for about $200 or so considering how old the one she has is. You could then hook up the old boot disk as a slave and see if you can access it and copy over her goodies.

[dragonash]

well, from how you describe it, there does seem to be a possibility that the HD is starting to go on you.

I've experienced loud clicking sounds and then quietness too. It was more along the lines of how you would try to start a car, then it dies. Click click click....silence. (no spinup sound after)

How old is the HD, how large and what company?

[lilith]

It is an HP, probably 7 years old. I'm not sure how big the hard drive is. It was big at the time she bought it... :o She has had really good luck with it. I have the same machine and have loved mine as well. No problems to speak of except I also just had to replace the power supply.
the noise went like this:
click-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a
Stop noise
click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-click-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-aclick-a click-a click-a
fast spinning - STOP noise - start Windoze :)

[dragonash]

backup everything (you did already i thought)

get a new HD
newegg.com