Lomaca,

can't reply to your post on the General Forum , won't let me in for some reason, but just to clarify, no good trying to plug any USB stuff as there is no communication from comp to Monitor except to say that no keyboard is detected? that's the problem? your help is appreciated!

Then I go and post this on the wrong Forum?

Sorry to hear that Party.

When you start it up listen to the beeps and make note of them, it will tell you what sort of mechanical fault is present.

Look up beep codes on the net match it to the make of your comp. and you'll at least know the approximate location of the problem.

If all else fails buy an external USB hard drive caddy (cost about $30) take out your hard drives from the machine and bin the rest.

This way you will have access to all the data on the drives, it's very unlikely the drives would be faulty.

Good luck with it.

PS make sure what sort of drives you have before you buy the caddy, they could be IDE or SATA, most likely IDE being an older machine.