Old Pc has trouble booting

[Yero]

I have an old pc I built that gives me trouble once in awhile. Sometimes no matter how many times I shut it off and power on, it will not boot. Then if I wait a while and try again it usually works. Not a huge issue, but I always fear it will just stop booting up altogether. Ive tried unplugging, waiting 10 secs then plugging in and powering on, but no luck. The mouse and keyboard light up, and the hard drive makes noise, but nothing shows up on the screen.

P4 2.4 ghz
Raptor 36 gb 10000 rpm

thanks

 

[piasabird]

Often it is the power supply. What kind of power supply you have?

Maybe something is grounding out? Like a screw under the motherboard.

Hard Drive may be bad or not getting enough power see first item about the power supply also. Sometimes when a hard drives goes bad it will still try to spin up and start but then it will cause problems. I have seen a system with 2 hard drives (one of them Bad) and it will cause the working drive to not be seen. I think this has something to do with the BIOS and the cable, etc.