Gateway won't boot up. I turn it on and all it does is turn on..... There's NOTHING on the monitor....just the amber blinking light, and I don't know what the problem is.
Power supply is running perfect.
Both CD Rom drives run/open/spin.
Floppy disk light is always on, and won't read the floppy (Windows Start-Up disk) inserted.

I thought my hard drive had crashed, so I went out and bought a new one.....hooked it up correctly, but still nothing happens when I start it up.....I don't hear the usual grinding-like noises, nor does the monitor "kick" in.

SUGGESTIONS? PLEASE!

Stupid suggestion, but have you tried physicly turning off and on your monitor?
Sometimes mine stays black too and a simple off/on does the trick.
But I guess you'll better wait for the more techy guys like Satis to come to your resque.

2 things to try.

1) take a good look of the cable connecting your computer and monitore, see if there are any "teeth" missing

2) this involves borrowing a laptop from a friend. Connect the laptop to the monitor.

This sounds awfully familiar to something i dealt at a friends house. She had a broken graphics card.

Just read your message again, how old exactly is this computer. Have you had any powersurges lately that could have fried something? Have you physically damaged your computer (lol i know, had to ask)

Thanks for re-reading my post. My original question was not about the Monitor (which does work perfectly well with the desktop computer it's hooked up to. I was simply stating the fact that the monitor does NOT "kick in", or come on when I connect my brother's computer to it. There's not enough "boost" to get the computer to boot up. Someone suggested it might be the Newton Power, Ltd. power supply unit.
Suggestions? How much is a supply unit?

Ok its not your power supply. If your computer is starting "IE your hear fans turning and cd-rom lights turning on, then you have enough juice.

Its either your video card or your motherboard.

To test the video card, pull it out and put another on in its place. Or, reseat your video card. (pull it out and plug it back in. )

If that doesnt work then you more than likley have a bad motherboard.

If at any point you where overclocking you system on the motherboard that would cause it to lock up as well.

Edit:
could all be memory but I doubt it.

This is what I would do. Unplug your floppy drive and your hard drive and your cd rom, your sound card and all that extra crap you have connected to the motherboard. Just have the processor, memory,video card and power connected to it. Plug in your monitor andturn on your computer. If you dont get BIOS screen then you have a hardware issue of course. Which narrows it down to CPU ( if you have a AMD or a Intel Celeron I would suggest it might be a bad processor ), memory, video, or motherboard.

yea, I concur entirely with 11b. Definetley a hardware issue. I assume you never get your BIOS beeping noise like you would normally, right? That means it's not posting, which means you have a hardware problem. I don't really have much to add to 11b's post, he's all over it.

You just want my man juice.

you wish, Conan boy.

Thanks, ElevenBravo....
I've printed your advice and will give it a whirl. Will post again when I've tried all that....
I DO get the CD rom lights to turn on, the floppy disk light comes on, the fan, and all that....
When the monitor is plugged into the CPU, I know the monitor "recognizes" the video card, because I don't get the usual "no signal", there's just NOTHING else that happens. I can hear and see the fan working, the drive lights coming on and all that.
Good thing I checked this message thread before going out and buying a power suppy unit (250 Watts). I'd never heard of a PSU going out before, and was stumped.
Again, THANK YOU for your advice. Will give it a try and post back.

Okay, here's what I did:
1) Unplugged/disconnected power cords & cables from hard drive, floppy disk, CD roms from the motherboard & power supplies.
2) Moved the video card to an open slot, then
3) plugged in only the monitor & power cord to the CPU, and started the computer.
NOTHING happened, except the power light (on the front) and the fan.

Now what? Should I salvage parts & ditch this piece of junk, or what?

at that point it's either your video card, ram, cpu, or motherboard. If you have multiple sticks of RAM, you can try swapping one in and out to check that out. Chances are it's your vid card, though. You my want to try buying a new one and tossing it in...if that doesn't work, you can always return it to the store as defective (I know I have). If it works, great. If it doesn't, well, you're down the RAM, CPU and mobo.

At this point you could consider bringing it in to a pc repairing service thing...they have the necessary parts to swap around to test what the faulty one is, as I can imagine you don't feel like going through the trouble if you don't have spare parts lying around. I know, I know, professional pc repairmen often try to rip you off, but it's just an idea. If you explain what you tried yourself already they should be done pretty quickly testing the bad part out.

The RAM is 256MB, and there's nothing wrong with that part.
I'm confused.... You said that it is either the CPU or the motherboard. I thought the CPU WAS the motherboard. Could a layman get an understandable explanation?

Okay, I disconnected absolutely EVERYTHING, except power supply, fan, and video card. Turned on PC, and got a NO SIGNAL from the monitor, and again, nothing else happened. No beeping, no grinding, no "nada."

Would a bad video card (this is an ATI card) cause nothing else to happen, no bios, no nada?

the CPU is the processor (central processing unit). It's directly underneat the large fan/heat sink on the motherboard. The Motherboard is teh huge chunk of silicon and crap that everything plugs into.

By unplugged everything....the bare minimums you have to have plugged in for a pc to function is

power supply to motherboard, cpu into motherboard, RAM into motherboard, and video card into motherboard. If you're missing any of those pieces, even a perfectly healthy PC won't boot up.

You're still down to cpu/video card/motherboard/RAM as possible culprits. The only way to narrow it down any further is to start swapping out parts. Either that, or take it to a professional to diagnose the issue, I suppose. Personally, I have so many extra parts laying around (been building PCs for nearly 5 years now) that swapping parts is no big deal for me.