Need a hand diagnosing PC startup problem

paddyrg

Hi all,

Would value your ideas about this, I am stumped.

PC, about 6 yrs old Quad-core, not as young as it used to be, already changed the hard drive once. If I can't bring it back to life, I may just use my far more powerful laptop instead, however it is convenient.

Problem - will not start up. Vista home premium. We get to the pseudo-progress bar stage and no further. Tried safe mode - as the list of drivers scrolls up the screen, we get stuck on BMLoad.sys (!!!!!! is that doing in safe mode startup?) and machine freezes. Tried the windows self-heal tool thingy the one time I was able to boot into that environment, made no difference, and had no luck since. I don't have the original disc, it was a packardbell pre-imaged machine, and I changed drive once and managed to strongarm it into working.

Physical symtoms are possibly interesting. Blinkenlights come on, however the fan on the cpu/graphics card doesn't make its customary spinning-up noise which I would expect from it, suggesting possible hardware/self-check issue blocking the startup? No BSOD though, just freezes.

Disk works fine - can boot into Linux and as I can run in various resolutions, the graphics card must be ok too I assume - in fact this suggests hardware not at fault?

Anyone got any specific ideas that fit these symptoms? Kindly appreciated!