Will someone please help my tired brain.

System Specs:
Asus A7N8X MOBO
AMD XP 2200+ Processor
Maxtor 120 GB 7200 RPM HD
Gainward FX5200 128MB Video
Crucial 1 GB DDR 2700 333 Mem (2X512)
400W Powmax PS

System belongs to a friend and I built it. (Bah) 2 years old.
They were Ebaying when the system locked up on them. Upon reboot the system will not post.
It won't even trigger the monitor. Monitor says no connection.
The harddrive spins up but it never beeps.
The CPU fan comes on the case fans come on but thats it.

I thought Video first off. Changed the video card with a known good card of mine and same result.

No post, No beep, No video.

Then I changed the power supply. Thinking that maybe the PS was going out.
No change.

Then I Changed the Harddrive hoping that maybe I had a failing HD. No change.

Then I changed the HD cable. No change.

Then I changed the Processor. No change.

Then I changed the MOBO. No change.

I have unpluged everything but the HD. Just trying to boot with CPU, MEM, HD, VIDEO. No change.

Tried a couple monitors too just cause I felt like I hadn't hooked and unhooked enough stuff during this whole process.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

This post has been edited by Sticc: Jan 4 2006, 10:14 PM

Sorry to inform you, but i think you should prepare for the worst and the worst is that power surge fried a lot of stuff in that could be a combo of them, such as HD, MOBO, and Gfx Card
MEM and CPU are usually safe from surges. But i have had a surge before and everything was dead except for the fans and the lights, instead of replacint the parts to see which 1 is broken you should consider plugging the parts into a good working pc and see which 1's are working, and get that visa card ready cause spending might be inevitable. Don't stick anything into that system anymore to prevent further damage to the parts. Buy a surge protector.

I Pluggd the GFX card and MEM into another board with another CPU with a positive result.

Suspect processor + new board = no post

Suspect board + new processor = no post

Could the socket have gone bad on the board frying the CPU?

Isn't that odd that the CPU and board would go bad in tandem?

I even pulled the suspect board out of the cpu placed it on a piece of cardboard plugged in the PS
MEM and GFX card to rule out a grounding issue with the case = no post.

Well it could be ur rotten luck that the cpu and mobo r both fried. but ur mem and gfx is still fine so you should be happy. I have always used intel cpu's and they never fried but i am not sure about amd, most surges only affect parts that's directly conneced to the cpu. Most of the time the board takes the damage and leave the cpu unharmed, but in this case somehow your cpu got fried too. the surge could have bounced off the case and hit the socket...
Anyways consider urself lucky that everything else is fine, and if i were u i'd chuck that PSU as far as possible and pick up a new one. Get surge protection.. and I assume ur HD is still working?

Haven't tried the HD as of yet I ran out of time. I will be checking that this evenining.
Thanks for the help.

Does sound like a surge caused some serious damage, depends on how big the surge was and how good the motherboard and PSU is wether the CPU or motherboard are irreperably damaged. The fact that its a K7 asus motherboard would make me think the mobo want that great so the cpu didnt have enough protection(ASUS specialised in intel chips but there first attempts at AMD were trully bad and they got a bad rep for it, they still occasionaly have the AMD hiccups the company just never seemed to get the problems ironed out, although there latest range of AMD mobos are supposed to be great).

I dont know where you live but if youre in the US a UPS is a good idea or if you are in an area known for power fluctuations.

Does sound like a complete drastic surge youve swapped out the stuff so you know whats good and whats not so thats a good thing, so youll need to replace the CPU, mobo and the PSU at least, RAM and gfx cards are usually safer so thats no surprise that they are ok, cpu is slightly greater risk than the memory and gfx card.

Just seems like they were unlucky, some surge protection is always useful, at least a surge protected socket or a UPS.

PSU i would get something quality if there is a power problem in the area or their house bad enough to cause that, a good PSU can often save the computers components, Antec would be a god choice or another reliable brand.

OK the HD beeps and is recognized by the bios. It starts to load Windows 2000 Pro (the black screen with the bar at the bottom) and stalls there.

Is that indicative of a bad drive or wrong drivers and chipset from origional windows load?

that drive is fine, you have to have the exact same mobo with the same chipset to avoid reinstallation of windows.

Update:

I am replacing with an MSI-754 socket board, a Semptron 64 CPU, an Antec PS 480w, and I
also got the client a UPS, a ABS 650W I believe.

I asked the client if they had a noticeable power surge at their home and they said they had earlier on the
day the CPU died.

I guess it stressed the components enough that while idle it was fine but when they got on that evening
it went caput.

Thanks ALOT for your help guys.

PS My new CPU parts are arriving Im getting-

MSI K8N SLI-F Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor
2-Western Digital Raptor 36 GB 10000 RPM Drives ( thinking about Raid 0)

Still have to save for the MEM and Video ran out of money. LOL
I'm spoiled cause this is just my going to be gaming machine
Planning on 2 gigs of ram and GeForce 7800GT 256 PCI-E Card

Any recomendations on RAM? I'm leaning towards OCZ or Kingston

I wouldnt have got the raptors they are a waste of money, the newer 7200rpm drives actually perform much better. Im surprised you downgraded the cpu i would have though something from the normal athlon range would have been more appropriate since thats what they allready had.

Corsair make the best ram in terms of cost and performance.