T60 stops booting at a blinking cursor

[yak]

Hi guys and gals,

I'm looking at a nice specced T60 on eBay here in Germany. The price might end up low because it's being sold as non-functional. The guy says it will show the POST but then stop booting at a black screen with a blinking cursor. If the HDD is removed, it will show a no-boot-device error. This pretty much looks like a trashed OS installation or HDD failure but the odd thing is that it does the same when booted from a Windows installation CD. It shows the blue screen where it loads all the drivers and then hangs on the same black screen with a blinking cursor.

No beeps or whatever. What could it be? RAM?

[richk]

I doubt RAM, but possible. I would check for a spill first.