System Startup Failure

[Kente]

My friend has a pentium 4 1500 mghz computer that he's been having problems with. His computer is custom built by another friend of his, and he's had it for about 6 months now. I'm not sure of the exact specs (im gonna check it out tomorrow), but he's got an asus board in there. The computer was working fine until he got back from christmas break, then when he tried to boot up it just wouldn't work. For some reason it gives him something to the effect of "system startup failure" over and over again, and a red light indicator on the front blinks. I haven't looked at it yet, and really don't know exactly what he's talking about, but I'm going over there tomorrow to check it out. Any suggestions on what could be the problem?

 

[Beau]

Redlight blinking on the front could be his IDE indicator. His hard disk may have been damaged, and become unreadable.

Man i wish I had a 1500 MGhz computer

1500000000000000000 Mhz would be faaaaaast!

 

[everman]

Sounds like it was left in a dorm for a while? If that's the case, maybe you should check inside the case and make sure everything is still in there.

 

[majewski9]

That seems to me like a hard disk failure. Was there ever a sudden power loss? That has damaged many of good disks!!!

 

[Kente]

Well there may have been a power loss... that's definitely a possibility, and a good one at that. All he knows is that it was working fine before christmas break (and yes, he stays in the dorms here at school), but after he returned it wouldn't boot up at all. Just an error message and a blinking red light:/

Thanks for the advice so far, buying a new hard drive wouldn't be all that bad I guess if that's the case...