Hi all; Had a home-built system sitting around for a few years (not built by me), and decided to upgrade the processor to do some video editing. It's an A7A266 v.1.10 that ran at 1GHz (an AMD processor, not sure which one). Also has Win2K, 300W PSU, 512K RAM, Audigy SoundBlaster, Radeon video card, firewire connections, 2 40Gb drives, a CD-RW, and most recently I installed a LightScribe DVD burner. What I did was to find an inexpensive XP2400 AMD processor to replace it with (specs say it should work, and others here say they have used it). Now, please understand my specialty is building websites, not computers, but I did a lot of research on this and replacing the CPU seems pretty straightforward -- remove the fan and heatsink (carefully!), unlatch the old CPU, replace with the new (adding a dab of that grease), lock down the fan/heatsink (carefully!) and viola! it should start right up. Which it did. Booted into the bios, and I accepted the defaults at 15x, I believe (bios v. 1013) and didn't even get to the overclocking part. It ran fine, clocked at 2000GHz+, ran much faster than before. Motherboard Monitor said it was in the high 40sC and creeping up (there was a second temperature about 20 degrees higher in the tray -- don't know what that was since there is only one processor). Figured it would run hot, but intended to keep an eye on it. And it was fine for a couple of hours. I put the sides back on and turned to my other computer, attempting to find the first computer so I could transfer files. After no more than 2 hours, and having literally *just* making the connection between computers, I heard my freshly rebuilt computer shut itself down! I wasn't looking, so have no idea whether there were error messages or not. All attempts to restart it have failed. No fan, no drive spinup, just a green LED on the mobo to indicate it's getting power. No POST. It's not in jumper mode, and all jumpers are set to off. I have checked the seating on all cards, removed the CMOS battery, switched around the RAM, taken one stick out, unplugged the disk drives, but nothing. I even went back and replaced the original CPU. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Does anyone have a suggestion? I'm mystified. I've been searching the net for 24 hours and haven't come up with a solution. Somehow I just don't think the mobo is fried (no burn marks, no scorched smell), but that some warning mechanism turned the computer off when it got too hot and needs to be reset. The mobo looks to be more than 1/4" away from the casing, so I don't think that's the problem either. Thanks in advance, ... Tod

It has power, if the drives are plugged in then the power supply isn't the problem, I had this exact problem because I unlatched the CPU fan, and the loosened it a little pulling it upwards to whipe some dust, when I tried to boot it showed signs of power, but no beep or anything, no video...so I knew the problem was the CPU, I checked it out...and the CPU itself wasn't fastened in because the maufactures used too much thermal grease or something, that the CPU stuck onto the heatsink. I somehow took out the CPU and got it back in securely making sure, it worked... and at the time the mobo was outside the case on the side of it, as I was shutting down, it shut down itself and a small spark lit up with a little smoke, the damage looked small but the mobo was gone, check for any little marks or signs of anything that might have happened as it shut down.

You may have cooked the CPU ??

Problem solved. Turned out to be a bad power supply. Replaced it with a 400w PSU and it works fine.