Thank you for your time and advise. I will try that, but it'll be days before i have access to a monitor sadly. Last Wed night/Thurs morning i shut down the laptop properly from the start menu, but lost patience waiting for it complete, and i closed the lid down before it had finished (stupid, because i do know better, i was just knackered)...and now wonder if it was performing a Windows update download or install, as that is usually when it happens and wonder too if i have corrupted the O/S. I hear no musical sounds on boot, just the mechanical sound of the tray. I am d/lg an iso of W7 as i type, to burn as a recovery/repair or re-installation disc, as i have none. Obviously with no display i cannot get into the bios to change the boot menu, so am not sure that'll work, but seeing as the disc tray seems to sound functional i thought i'd give it a go, wondering if the display drivers had been corrupted?? and maybe if it's just the O/S that is corrupt that that is maybe why it still reads as an external drive once put in a caddy?? Tried with and without battery, and fully discharged by repeatedly pressing power button but made no difference. I'm not great with pc repair and know very little, but keen to learn. I have found the key you refer to, it's F5 on mine, cheers for that. Is it very difficult to fit a motherboard, or graphics card?...as i do fear that you're right and it is one of those two options. Could it be a processor problem, would that stop it booting up, or would nothing engage if it were the chip, not even the tray?? Sorry to bombard you with questions, just i feel like crying at the moment as all my 45K music files are on there :-( Kind regards and much gratitude, Maria