Dell PC won't boot

Help needed with my brother's Dell PC. It's a couple of years old and that's about all I know about it so far. He just rang and said when he tries to boot it, it goes to a black screen with Dell on it, then it goes to a blank black screen with a cursor blinking in the top left hand corner. It's probably running XP.

I know it's not much to go on, but I just thought it might be a common thing that someone knows about.

There is no beep on boot attempt.
Pressing Del key gives "keyboard error" on screen and the blinking cursor.
Pressing F8 results in a high pitched, short beep and then the blinking cursor.

He had an electrician replacing a switch in teh fuse box today. The electrician told my nephew (21 y. o.) to turn off the computer, which he said he did. Next boot after this failed. I wondered if the shutdown did not complete before the sparky did something and maybe something blew in the PC???

Thanks for any suggestions.

GCW esq

 

sounds like something is shorted HI pitched sounds are never good but its normal for a pc to Beep when you hold down a key before boot

 

Hmmm... thinking the same. Thanks for that. I did wonder about resetting the BIOS to see if that would help.