Thanks Phillip Hands, Ian Birdsey, Ian Lynch, David Nelson, David Woolard etc. the advice was very helpful and greatly appreciated in the end I did practically the whole lot recommended. PSU did need replacing cleared CMOS and reseated processor, cpu worked in other PC etc finally convinced mboard gone got new one ECS mboard(poor board poor layout) still didnt work then thought front case switches (wires everywhere made me look clever?) then graphics card - finally day and half later pinned it down to one hdd making system not come on (presumably shorted) and then got smoke coming from 2nd hdd (ho ho) so next step will be new hdd and hope the rest works Thanks for all the help - I enjoyed figuring it out (cept for the cost) I now know heaps more (may not amount to much!) Yours Ron __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com