Just a note to let you all know what can go wrong when your looking for a problem in the wrong location. I was hired to replace a motherboard for this guy. I have done this a few times so it should be easy money. I pulled the old motherboard and put the new one in. I plug it in. and boom I fried the motherboard, the cpu and the ram. back to the computer store I go....... Im thinking that it is the Power supply or the power in my house. Get the new motherboard in and booooom same thing plus the power supply now pops and is now dead. (He replaced the power supply 3 weeks ago) I think ok it was the power supply and return all again. This time I build a antistatic table setup to test everything before I put it in. Ok all is working. Put everything in this time I used an old motherobard to test and boom fry the motherboard again. But I think to myself why did it work on the table. Pulled everything again and tested on the table works great. Put everything in only power and mouse and keyboard is on. Turned the power on nothing. Nothing is working. at all. i think S(*&... By chance I taped the corner of the motherboard and the mouse light went on. tap tap tap tap yes why is the light going on and off on the mouse. To make a long story longer... The spacers on the old motherboard were different than the spacers on the new one. The spacer was shorting out everything when the weight of the cables were pushing the mobo to the spacer and poooof. After messing with this for a week. I told the guy I could not charge him but 10$ and the price of the mobo, ram and CPU.. This goes to show you that no mater what you think you know you can still mess up the smallest things. Check everything........ Michael

Man that's a tough one that could happen to anybody. I'm just curious though - were both mobo's ATX? If so, you kind of got a raw deal because even if the mobo maker doesn't use all the holes in the ATX spec you'd think they'd be aware that there may be standoffs in the way in those places where they don't have a hole but another atx mobo would have a hole.

your not the first person to have this happen to them.

oops....i've done that...I thank frys for thier no questions asked return policy ;)

Yes both were ATX the old one was much smaller. A clone bundle. And yes thanks to Fry's The lesson did not cost me any more than gas and time. The guy gave me a 50$ bonus for my troubles. It was a fun time for troubleshooting.

Sorry to here about your prob. Skip recently posted "How to destroy your machine; Part 1" in the CPU forum...one of the things mentioned was having a spacer in the wrong place & shorting out the board http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwboard/forum/7884.html