Thank you in advance for your assistance. Excuse me for lack of detail and knowledge, I will try and give as much information as possible. Actually, I've decided to attempt to repair 1 laptop at a time - I'll start a separate thread once I've (fingers crossed) got the first one working!
Laptop 1. I believe is running Windows 2000, but I added some DJ software (Final Scratch) that runs on Linux, drive partitioned and laptop worked fine for a couple of years on both OS's. I do not have the original boot disks or the Final Scratch disk. A couple of years ago (for some unknown reason - though drunken stupidity comes to mind) I decided to rename one of the drives (partitions) and it's never booted up since!
I get the manufacturers 'splash' screen and can get into the BIOS on F2. When loading from CD-ROM with UBCD on CD-R, burnt at the minimum speed that Activ@ allowed, I get.
GRUB Loading stage 1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 15
When booting from the HDD I get:
Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997,1998,1999 Intel corporation
VIA PCI 10/100Mb Fast Ethernet Adapter v1.19 (2001/11/16)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel PXE ROM.
GRUB Loading stage 1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 15

No button pressing on the keyboard allows me to enter anything - so I switch off! i was hoping that when I booted from UBCD something would happen!

Thanks again for your help!

I don't think you have actually booted to UBCD. But let's leave that issue, for now.

First, before anything else, you have to be sure you can work with AC power during the tests and troubleshooting, not just the laptop batteries.

Second, you need to be sure that any settings you save to the BIOS, is actually being saved. If the battery that powers the BIOS has a problem (we'll check this during the tests) you will have to change it (I'm not talking about the "big" battery from the back of the laptop, I'm talking about a little battery that is inside your computer that keeps giving power to the BIOS).

The reason for having to check the batteries is that you haven't used the laptop for 2 years. With the following steps (and others that could follow these) we will (additionally) see if the batteries are working.

You may need to check the BIOS boot settings, and maybe change them (that's why I say that the little BIOS' battery must be ok).

So, as I said, first plug your laptop to the AC power (and do not unplug it until your system is running ok).

You need to unplug the laptop from anything else: no network cables, no usb sticks, no external HDD cases, no floppies inserted, no CD inserted...

Boot into the BIOS (you said, with F2). Look for booting options. One booting option says either:

A) to boot into HDD; or
B) to boot from additional cards (or something similar)

Please be sure it says to boot into HDD first, not to boot first using additional cards. Additionally, if you have more than 1 internal HDD, please add that information in the next post (describing what the BIOS reads about installed HDD).

Another boot setting in the BIOS sets the boot order, for example: first HDD, then CD, then floppy. If you have 1 HDD, then be sure this settings are booting first from your HDD (we may need to change this later, but for now, this should be the best option). Again, if you have more than 1 HDD, please describe what the BIOS displays.

Save the BIOS options and exit. Boot again into the BIOS, and check that the options you previously set are still the ones selected. If they are, then exit and reboot. If you see an error again, completely power off your laptop (leave the AC power cable plugged in), wait at least 2 minutes, and boot again into the BIOS. Are the selected options still the same?

Report back according to my requests, and we'll see from there how to continue.

ady, thanks for your help so far, unfortunately been busy on other things but will follow your instructions later today and report back!