My monitor wont turn on!!! Grrr!!!

[BrokenKingdom]

i have just bought a computer from a good friend of mine. he sold me everything but his hard drive because he had some programs/files wich he still wanted. So when i got home i simply took the hard drive from my old computer, an emachine, and installed it in the new computer. But when i turn on the new computer(with my old hard drive) the monitor doesnt display anything and seems to be 'stuck' in stand by mode(the green monitor power light blinks). The computer turns on(the fans, and power led) but the poor poor monitor just wont display anything. can somone help me out ??

P.S. i put the hd back in my old computer and it works just fine :/

[icallmedan]

Try making sure the HDD cable in your new computer is plugged in the right way. That is probably your problem. If not...try a different IDE cable. Maybe the eMachines is a special cable that will only work with eMachines PCs. Ask your friend if he has some extra IDE cables you could borrow, or ask him if he can come over and help you work out the problem.

[glc]

Check your cabling and jumpering and reseat all cards and ram modules.

Depending on the version of Windows, it may not boot all the way anyway - we need some more details here on both systems.

[BrokenKingdom]

well the 'new' computer has an amd athlon 1600 processor, 512mb sdram, and a gainward geforce 4 video card. the 'old'(emachine) computer has an intel celeron, 256mb sdram, and onboard video/audio. The hard drive the im putting into the 'new' computer came from the emachine. its a 20Gb maxtor 'quantum fireball'. im running windows xp

if ANY of that helps.

[icallmedan]

I had a Quantum Fireball, not in my main system, but in my old one. Man that thing is loud. What OS are you running with this HDD. If it still has all the eMachines software on it, it may not boot if the HDD doesn't detect certain settings about the computer. That is just one guess. Make sure that the jumpers are set correctly. Make sure the HDD is set to be the master, and make sure it is on the very end of the IDE connector.