Being the dumbass pc novice that I am. I
tried installing a new heatsink and fan for
the first time. I bought a taisol, forgot
which brand and it came with thermal
padding. I removed the protective plastic
covering off the pad but then didn't realize
that it had another blue plastic covering
on the pad. Could this have fried my
Athlon xp 2000. When i first tried the fan
my computer turned itself off. but when i
try booting it again. No display, no beep
just power to fans and LEDs. later I did a
close inspection of my cpu, it didn't
appear to have scorch marks and I don't
ever remember smelling any type of
burning my first time booting up. I
cleaned up off all the thermal padding
residue and tried thermal grease but my
computer still will not start up to bios. I've
only had this system for a month!!!! never
again will i fuk around with these fans,
heatsinks or cpus. So is it possible that I
fried my cpu by leaving the protective
plastic on the pad when i first started the
system????

did you check to see if the processor was installed correctly? I had that kind of problem last night and my processor wasn't in all the way. hope that helps :-)

first, do what paul says and make sure it's securely in the socket. make sure you didn't knock out any cables or something.

with amd chips, if there isn't enough cooling, you can fry your chip in under a second (just a few nanoseconds are needed). so maybe the protective plastic prevented heat dissipation...thus all the heat was kept in the cpu, which fried it (when booting up, the cpu is at full load trying to load everything). it's not like an intel chip which will slow itself when it detects being overheated.

anyway, borrow a cpu from a friend and see if his cpu will start up your computer (or put your cpu in your friend's computer). make sure the mobo supports the cpu.

the thing with my system was that it was working fine before I tried installing the new heatsink & fan. I never moved the cpu from it socket, so Im pretty sure its secured. I think I'm just going to have to accept the fact that my cpu is fried, but I expected it to actually look fried, like those amd chips on TomsHW site. My athlon looks normal except for some left over residue from the thermal pad. Maybe the blue protective layering melted over my core and I just can't see it cause its transparent. Anyways, I'm bringing my system in to have some professionals look at it and give me a diagnostics. Can you believe it cost around 30-50 bucks just for them to tell me what I already know. I just want to get professional opinion so I know if it really is the processor. I don't want to RMA the wrong thing. Thanks for those who replied, much appreciated.