Computor won't start

After my system locked up running windows media player, I pushed the reset button on the tower. After showing the bios version, processor, memory amount and "memory mode: dual channel", "highperformance DDR Timing enabled" that is as far as it gets. No longer does it show "detecting IDE drives…" or anything else. All the fans are running. I have disconnected all other drives except the 160 gb maxtor hard drive containing window xp. It will not allow me to access the CMOS settings either. I scanned with AVG, spybot, and adaware the evening before. To my knowledge, there had been no internet access since the scans. Any ideas?

ok… last night I had a few minutes to work on it. I unplugged all ribbon cables from the motherboard and it rebooted past the point where it hung up before. Through a process of elimination, I have either a bad ribbon cable to my cdrom or a bad cdrom. Without the cable plugged into the motherboard everything works fine with all other devices plugged in and running. I will dig out another ribbon cable and try but I suspect a bad cdrom.

bad cdrom. changed cables and still wouldn't boot. dvdrom on secondary slave works fine. sounds like time for a new cdrom.