Persuaded a friend to buy a Dell outlet machine because it was cheap and she couldn't afford to spend the extra I suggested on a home build. It's a C2Q with two 750gig HDDs, 4gig RAM, 7 x64 Home Premium and a 4350. Her TV is a Pana TX-32LZD80. When connected to a normal monitor via DVI, the PC works fine. Plug the TV in via HDMI and there it is Catalyst Control Centre picks it up and allows me to either configure twin displays or disable the monitor (or I can simply unplug it).

However, when I reboot the machine with just the TV connected - nothing. Further to that, when you press the power button on the PC it just turns off straight away - indicating that it hadn't POSTd or at least hadn't reached Windows. If I put it to sleep with just the TV connected, it will wake up fine.

As a workaround, the sleep thing is ok for over night, but this machine is going to need to be restarted every now and again! She doesn't want, or have space, for a monitor in addition to the TV. This PC is supposed to be for browsing, music and movies - that's it. Any ideas???

I'd heard something about Dell's not booting when connected to TVs via HDMI!! Here

Some peeps here also says its the fault of the Panasonic as HDMI is not the recommended connection for PC/TV. I know my older Samsung would only accept PC input via a standard VGA D-Sub. If I tried to use the HDMI or even a DVI-HDMI convertor I got nothing!

Despite the frustrating nature of those threads, I very helpful read. Thanks.