ok, what happened is that my cpu, over night, started to run at 99-106C. because im stupid, i wrote it off as the censor act'n up. but it turned out that the fan was clogged with dust. well as im sure you can all guess, she died. she just shut off and didnt come back to life. so i need to replace whats broken. i think its either the mobo or the CPU or both. but i dont think anything else would have been damaged. is it possible that i just fried one or the other? cause i have heard that the mobo will give out to heat way b4 the cpu does. i have also heard that pentiums are good at overheat'n and dont damage to easy. so what do you guys think? is there anything else that i would need to replace ? any info is gr8

As far as I know, you cannot overheat a P4 to the point of failure...it's thermally protected. It's very possible that there's nothing wrong with either the board or the CPU. Unplug the power cord & try resetting the BIOS. From the Intel website: "in the event of a catastrophic cooling failure, the processor will automatically shut down when the silicon has reached a temperature of approximately 135 °C. At this point the system bus signal THERMTRIP# will go active and stay active until RESET# has been initiated. THERMTRIP# activation is independent of processor activity and does not generate any bus cycles. If THERMTRIP# is asserted, processor core voltage (Vcc) must be removed within the timeframe defined in Table 16." Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @ 8.5 x 200MHz 768MB PC3200 Asus A9550 128MB/128-bit Gamer Edition WinME/WinXP Pro

ok, i try'd to shut her down. infact i tried many many times. and the mother board led turned on, just as it should. and when i press the power button. she acts like she wants to go on, all the leds on the fans flicker for a sec, the far twitches, but nothing. i did reset the cmos as well. none of wich worked for me. but what you said sounds very good to me, have any more info on how i can reset it ? what do i have to do ? thanks again

If you have Mb lights and fans, then it sounds like cpu went down...I agree it should havfe shut down from hear failure, but what you are seeing sounds like dead cpu.

heres another nugget of info for you, from the power supply, conects two power conectors to the mobo, the 12v connecter and another longer one(i dont know the name) for fun, i unpluged the 12v plug from the mobo. and the comp seems to start up, all the fans leds came on, the fans were spin'n up a fury. i heard the HD clicks.....but i didnt hear any beeps from the mobo. when i pluged the 12v plug in, back to death. i didnt plug the monitor in, because i dont know what will happen to the comp if i run with out the 12volt plug. i didnt even have the monitor pluged in and still the mobo didnt beep at all.

Just for the hell of it, I'd try another power supply. YO

The square 4-pin plug powers the CPU. Try disconnecting everything except the bare essentials...this will lighten the load on the PSU & might help determine which piece of hardware is the culprit. Unplug any HDDs, optical drives, floppy, etc (both the power & IDE cables)...remove all cards but video...if you have more than one stick of RAM, remove all but one. Disconnect the mouse, cooling fans, & any USB devices. All you need is the board, PSU, CPU w/HSF, one stick of RAM & keyboard. ClearCMOS (power cord MUST be unplugged when doing this), then see if you can boot & get into the BIOS Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @ 8.5 x 200MHz 768MB PC3200 Asus A9550 128MB/128-bit Gamer Edition WinME/WinXP Pro