How old is the hard drive in that unit? You may have a hard drive failure, or memory failure, screen failure, bad power socket, or other hardware problem that will require some help from a technician, or someone experienced with repairing laptops.

 

Thanks Raybay,
As you can appreciate it is an old laptop and not worth spending too much money on, so if it needs to go to a technician then it probably will be scrapped, as unfortunately I don't know anyone with experience of repairing laptops.
The hard drive is probably quite old now ( i didn't have it from new) If it was a hard drive failure shouldn't I see the pc start to boot up and look for the operating system?
I have tried to boot it up with the RAM removed but with no luck.
I appreciate it may be screen failure but I get no joy with an external monitor either. Would I get the boot sequence on the external monitor, or does that require an operating system to be functional?
If it was a power failure would the lights come on, the battery charge and the hard disk spin up? Could it be a power failure to the monitor alone?
Thanks

 

We have worked on a lot of those units... and they are fine, but you have all the symptoms of a failed hard drive... and right now they are hard to get at a reasonable price. Do you have the rinstall disks?