I had a Asus A7m266 mobo with the AMD 1.4 w/ 266 bus. I had it for a year and two months or so ago I told windows to reboot and it basically crashed. The monitor turned off and the hard drive light went on and stayed on. I couldn't figure it out so I built a new system. I also built a another one to replace an old machine. For the first system I bought an Asus P4C800 Deluxe, a P4 2.8, and a gig of DDR400. I've been using the same graphics, sound, and modem cards. It's been fine for the two months. But after I first put it together, I had the same problem when I rebooted. I updated the BIOS and it fixed the problem. The second sytem has a Gigabyte GA-7VT600 and the old AMD 1.4 and PC2100. This system had the same problem from the get-go and I still haven't found the problem. I updated the BIOS immediatley after putting it together. Please help!

The only thing you can do with a situation like this is a stepped diagnostic. Remove from OUT of the box everything except the CPU/heatsink fan, one (1) stick memory. Boot. You will see nothing on the monitor, but does everything sound right? Power down. Install the Video Card. Boot. Do you post to BIOS at least 4 times in a row? Good. Now add your Harddrive. Boot. Okay, you got the picture. Your problem is one of the peripherals common to both builds. That includes your power supply. Eventually you will find it.