Black screen and no actions

Need some help from you computer savvy users....

I own a ACER desktop running Vista and last week I went to use it and the screen is black with "no signal" displayed (At least the screen works). After trying to restart a few times the computer powers up but that is all. It acts like it has zero software installed and I cannot do anything since there is nothing on the screen.

Any ideas how to restore this? Is there a key combination like shift+F9 to save me???

Thank goodness I have a laptop as well.

If you are not getting at least "BIOS" messages on the screen, I would suspect a bad power supply. That's a fairly inexpensive & easy fix. Haow old is it?

Its about 3 years old now. Power works, the light comes on and all, just nothing happening. The door to the DVD opens, I popped in a disc, door closed and DVD spins up for a few seconds and then stops without anything else happening.

When I say a bad power supply..... Let me explain. There ame may different color wires that come out of the power supply that have different voltages on them. I.e. +12v, -12v, +5v, +3.3V, ground, etc. They each get used for different things. For example the +12v 'spins' the motor in the hard drive. I suspect the voltage(s) used by the IC's on the mother board are missing. If were in front of me, I could test with a DVM. Do you have a spare power supply laying around? I would just do a swap & see what happens. Around here decent 400 watt power supplies can be bought new for around 30 bucks. Or, do you have a DVM & are you comfortable probing around inside the case?

Also, you didn't tell me if you are getting any "BIOS" messages on the screen, like amount of ram installed or a setup option for example when you turn on the computer....

Try checking all cable connections, then completely unplug the CPU and monitor from the power for about 3 minutes. Now plug in and try booting again.

Any luck with this Naturalist? Curious to see how you made out.

Sorry I have not gotten back sooner - Holidays and such.

I have not BIOS message - no messages at all, no start up screen displayed, nothing except "no signal". I will disconnect PS and see what happens and assure all connections are tight - though they should be since nothing has moved.

Will update in a day or so. Thanks for all the ideas and advice thus far.

No signal is a message generated by the monitor telling you it's getting nothing from the cpu. No BIOS messages is almost always the sign of a dead power supply. Good luck.

Cant be a faulty psu as the lights are coming on and the dvd drive opens.
It sounds like a problem between the video card and monitor connections.
make sure pc is off and disconnect the cable between the video card and the monitor and then re connect it back up again and make sure both connections are not loose then try again.