Does not have to be new just a known good drive

OK, do it yourself it is cheaper,
to check the winxp disk does your computer boot to it .!it does,ok then we know that not the problem ,maybe the cdrom is bad ,you could always hook on good one up to it and try that !

Apart from worrying about anyone whose website contains the name "Backroads" and who is promoting "custom choppers" this is what I now think.

If there is a power glitch (or indeed a defect in the IDE drive), then any part of the disk can be corrupted. If that happens to be the MBR or the partition table, that disk is f*cked until it is low level formatted and re-constituted from FDISK.

The puzzling thing is that, if I've read you right, even with a non-defective HDD, the CD won't boot. It should boot with the duff drive in. If the CD was dirty and it couldn't boot off it, then it would try to go to HDD, fail and your monjitor would go to standby.

So which is it now? Dirty CD (wash it)? Dirty CD/DVD lens (clean it); Faulty (through the aforementioned glitch) IDE circuitry (which could zap your HDD)?

What you've said is correct.. when set to boot from the dvd drive the drive spins but the screen goes into standby... it could be a dirty disc so maybe ill try giving it a clean but i have used the disc before to format a machine and it was fine. Not sure if this would make a difference but i ave the machine plugged into my sony bravia television via vga cable i know it works as i am able to view the bios screen but as soon as i try to boot from the cd it shows the bios splash then the dvd drive appears to kick in and the screen jumps to "out of range"the disc does sound like its being read though..

Booting should be in default VGA mode (640 x 480) @ 60Hz; I wouldn't have expected Windows/'DOS' to kick up to anything higher in vertical refresh terms when booting from CD. Other brainios here might know better.

So:

1/
What is the exact out of range message?

2/
What graphics card do you have & is there a DVI output that could go into the Bravia HDMI port??

3/
Have you examined the TV's menu options?

4/
Does your BIOS have any controls you can use to force VGA - I've forgotten that stuff as it's so long since I needed to go into BIOS!

The out of range message.. is pretty much exactly that.. it shows the PC input icon followed by the message "out of range" which is the same message displayed when there is no input so i gather from that its not recieving or able to display the image from the dead machine,

Its a packard bell machine and the graphics are onboard with no DVI out put.

Ive had a look but to be honest i think its on the right settings as ive had machines plugged in on it before and able to display an image and havent changed any settings.

It does have the option to force VGA but it does the same thing when i set that so to be honest im now fresh out of ideas... im sure its something really simple as well which is the frustrating thing!

nice motorbikes!

well this is constructive... has anyone got anything to add which might actually help me? lol

obvious thing to do is buy new harddrive , and hook all drives up correctly and it should work

this could be caused by power supply or cpu overheating ! make sure all fans are free of dust buildup