Desktop Intermittent Booting Up

I'm posting this on behalf of a friend because she admits herself that she's not very PC literate. She has a Compaq Presario and just recently it seems to have a problem booting up. Yesterday she must have tried countless times powering it on/off before it finally came to life. Anyway, the things I've established from a telephone conversation with her are the following:

• When the desktop is first turned on the green power light comes on and the amber hard drive light also comes on. But then after x number of minutes both lights go out.
• When the desktop is turned on the power light on her monitor stays amber and doesn't at any point turn on to green.
• She can hear a fan going inside but I'm assuming that's the main power fan and not the CPU fan.
• She doesn't hear any "beeping" noises coming from the desktop when it's turned which I understand can point towards a problem with things such as the memory or video card.

Now I'm no expert myself but I've done a bit of research and the one thing that keeps cropping up is that it could be the power supply. But if that's the case I'm a bit mystified as to how sometimes the desktop will eventually come to life.

Problem is my friend lives at the other end of the country so it's not as though I can pop over and check it out for myself. And she doesn't really know anyone else locally that has at least some knowledge of PC's to look into the problem for her. So if anyone's got any suggestions of things that I can talk her through I'd be very grateful.

Reseat the RAM. Unplug it, plug it back in. Do this a couple of times. Now see if the desktop boots normally.

See here for more information: http://forums.whatthetech.com/How_Test_Mem…ms_t103823.html

Visually inspect the motherboard for Leaking Capacitors. There is almost always a telltale orange crust on the top of leaking capacitors. They will also have domed tops instead of flat. They look like they blew their tops basically.

I'd be almost 100% sure it is one of the two above problems.

Its highly unlikely it is a power supply problem.