I have an eMachines desktop, an extremely basic model with Windows ME on it, that was bought brand new about 7 years ago. I had it for 3 years before it died. The night it died, a storm was coming, so, as usual, I shut it down and unplugged it. (I don't trust the the old wiring in the house, even with a surge protector). Everything was working great, until that apparently killer shut down. The next day, I plugged it back in and turned it on, and nothing showed up on the screen, all the fans came on, I heard the HDD spinning, and about every half second, the hard drive light would flash along with a simultaneous clicking noise. I replaced the RAM and the HDD with another, hoping that would help me out in the diagnosis, but as luck would have it, nothing, same old thing. Stopping the CPU fan with my finger or unplugging it gets rid of the clicking noise but not the flashing light and still no boot. I contacted eMachines about it 3 years ago and they never answered back.

I'm planning on re-building it into a gaming PC someday, but I want to know the most reasonable possibilities for this malfunction so I can get it running as soon as possible.

Thanks for any help.