Originally Posted by
allset2travel
Spell check: should be vintage 2005 (not vantage, sorry)
Thank you all for jumping in. I will copy and paste all suggestions and find time to follow the recommendations. Not particularly handy at this sort of things, but worth a try. My key concern is the data recovery. Good thing I have other PC to use in the meantime. I know I have a project for this weekend.
When powering it up, I don't hear any unusual noise other than that from the fan.
Will keep you posted. Thanks.
If that's your key concern, then find another system and move the drive over. Make it you're "D" drive (anything but boot) and then, assuming the drive is healthy, back up your files! You can also purchase an inexpensive housing to turn the drive into an external USB drive.
I would strongly advise minimizing the troubleshooting you do (especially messing around with power supplies or the motherboard) while you are admittedly inexperienced and have valuable data on board.