I brought my computer into the computer shop where I get my parts and they diagnosed the problem. We took out the motherboard and found that there was a burnt chip on it near the ram slots. I replaced the motherboard with an ASUS A7V8X-X and hooked everything up over there and the computer worked like charm. Strange thing was, when I got home and hooked up my keyboard and mouse instead of theirs, windows wouldn't detect my keyboard or mouse... They were detected on boot up but windows wouldn't detect them... I plugged my mouse into the usb port instead and then it was detected. I updated the bios and tried to manually add the keyboard with add hardware but that didn't detect it either.... any ideas?

try anther key board when your mobo died it might have taken it with it or it could have been the cause of its demise.

I tried that and it didn't work. I plugged in my dad's Dell keyboard and got nothing... My sister has a mac with a usb keyboard. When I plugged that in, it worked fine. So the mouse and keyboard aren't broken.... they're both detected on boot up and work in dos but windows won't detect them, even though it did with my old mother board. Another guy suggested that the mother board wasn't compatible with those keyboards, only ibm and hp keyboards... but then wouldn't it not work in dos either? I just don't get it....