I have had a look at some threads and stickies on here, and now I am slightly more worried than when I started looking round for options. I'll explain why in a bit.
My PC (which I bought second hand, and was assembled by an individual) won't start up. It was fine when I went away one weekend, and I got back, and it stopped working. To give a bit more info, when I turn on the power, the red LED on the motherboard (an Asus P428X) comes on & stays on, and a green light on the front of the case which marks out a cylinder (and which I'm guessing represents the hard drive) flickers. The lights on the keyboard also flicker. Nothing comes up on the monitor though, and there's no whirring of the hard drive or grinding noise of the floppy drive.
I haven't changed any components recently, the last thing that was changed was that I bought some RAM over 2 months ago and the machine still worked fine till now. So my simple question is, what things do I have to check/tweak/test to find out what has gone wrong? Also & this might not be important, for a while now, whenever I turn on the computer from the wall (and even now when it's not starting up), I hear a sound like you get from a television when it's just been turned on, before the picture comes up. I have only heard this sound with my computer and that's why I mention it here.
And finally, the bit that had me worried, my room is carpeted, and after Catweazle's guidelines, I'm worried about how I CAN work on the inside of my computer. The only places that aren't carpeted in my house are the kitchen and bathroom!
OK so that's all the info I've got, I welcome all suggestions and references wth much appreciation.