Sounds like your workmate has dislodged the video card and/or video cable
(check both ends) - or one or other have co-incidentally gone faulty.

But (as you can't apparently access the BIOS - have you tried Del, F1,
Fn+F1, Ctrl+F1, etc., etc.?) you may be able to confirm that it is not
caused by the Operating System (WinMe or XP - or more accurately, the HDD)
by booting using the WinMe Startup (floppy) Disk in the A drive.

If the problem remains (and, assuming that the BIOS is set to read the
Floppy drive first) then you can almost certainly suspect that the problem
is hardware related. Check for loose or misplaced cards and connectors.

Mart


"John" wrote in message
...
A workmate attempted to upgrade a friends compaq presario from ME to
XP,after
he had finished, the monitor display would not come on, the active light
on
the monitor flashed on for about 3 seconds then went back to standby.

I have visited the Compaq website and attempted to reset the BIOS using
their instructions but to no avail, attempting to get into safe mode is no
good either, no display.
The original ME operating system is is stored on the hard drive, so no
access to that either.

Any suggestions?

John