Computer does not boot

Hey all!

I have a very strange problem.
When I press the power button on my computer, the power light comes on, the fans go - it sounds like everything is running. However there is no beep and there is no signal on the monitor.

I have tried removing the RAM - this results in the "no RAM error beep" as expected. Replacing the RAM with my friend's RAM, which works in his computer, results in the same issues as mine, no beep and no signal on monitor.

Interestingly removing the Hard Drive results in the computer booting properly, however it obviously gets to the stage before Windows and asks for a system disk to be inserted.

I can also have my SATA DVD drive plugged in and the computer boots. I can use any of the SATA ports and it works but as soon as I plug the hard drive into one of the SATA ports, my computer doesn't like it and won't boot. The DVD drive is recognised as on the monitor it gives the message

"Boot from CD/DVD :"

when the DVD drive is plugged in and the HDD is not.

Please help! I have no idea what to do now...

Thanks in advance,

Oscar

I will also add that when I put in the Windows setup disc in, the computer happily loads setup until it notices there is no hard drive.

Do I need to replace my hard drive or is there something else I can do?

Alright, I have tried pluggin my hard drive into another computer.

The other computer, which works fine, has it's hard drive plugged into the SATA1 Port. I plug mine into the SATA2 Port. (There is also SATA3 and SATA4).

The other computer boots with my hard drive plugged in, it gets to the stage where it should load windows, but it flashes a blue screen and restarts.

Anyone know what's going on? Is my hard drive fried?

Yet another addition! (The plot thickens...)

I tried changing the SATA port the hard drive was connected to. I have 6 SATAII ports.

My hard drive was plugged into SATAII1 port. The computer won't boot when the hard drive is plugged into SATAII1, SATAII2, SATAII3 or SATAII4. However, if I plug the hard drive into SATAII5 or SATAII6, the computer beeps and loads the BIOS. However it runs EXTREMELY slowly, if I press the button for the boot menu, it takes about half a minute to actually open the boot menu.

It does not run Windows. It gives the same message as if there was not a hard drive at all, asking me to insert system disk.

When I put in the Windows install disk and try running it, it will run until the same point as if there was no hard drive, even though it is plugged in. The setup says it cannot detect a hard drive. Please note that when I originally put together the computer a few months back, it did immediately detect the hard drive when I installed windows.

Could be a faulty boot record(MBR), faulty motherboard(Do you know if any DIMM slots are dead?), or your hard drives jumper might not be set correctly. Could also be the motherboards built in drivers for SATA and RAID. Who makes your hard drive? Most companies will make a diagnostic utility for their drives; so install the drive into your friends PC, load the program and run it. That will be able to help pin point the general health of the drive. But a BIOS update/reflash wouldn't hurt either.

let me know which brand of mother board you are using,and if you remove the bios battery and put after a while do it shows a message like.. bad time...