Thanks for the advice. As it turns out you had most of the problem nailed.
I got to my friend's place and the first thing we did was try a new battery. No go. Tried alternative memory. Nothing. Tried putting in a video card and bingo -well, almost. We had video but we could only get so far...
I built a system for a friend with an Albatron K8M800-754 motherboard and a Sempron 2600+ CPU. We put the system together this past winter and got it up and running smoothly. My friend has had no problems until he just returned home from a 7-week vacation. He plugged in his computer, turned it...