My friend's grandson made her a computer 2 years ago and charged her $650. She started it one day and the monitor did not recognize that it was connected and never came out of sleep mode. I just tried another monitor and it did the same thing.

Her grandson told her it was the motherboard. I had advised her to not have him make her one but she wanted to help him out financially. She now has a new HP for $450 that works perfectly for her email, letters and online canasta. That's all she needs. She gave me her dead computer.

When I start it all up, it says 'system fail VDATEC', through the speakers. Atec is the name on some Gateway speakers I have sitting on a shelf. Is it telling me that the speakers fail or is that something to do with the motherboard? Is a computer like this worth fixing? It has XP Pro on it.