Some good ideas of things to try there! Alas, the blasted thing doesn't even have a floppy drive though I can borrow a USB one from work. Swapping IDE ports is easy to try so I'll also try that tonight. I don't think its the power supply as I already tried booting with hard drive disconnected and it made no difference though I have previous experience on how many odd symptoms these things can cause when they start to go wrong. Using a USB CD/DVD drive is something that didn't occur to me so is certainly worth considering if it is the motherboard and I cannot get the same model. Thanks a lot!! Keith |