frustrating pc problem

Hey I've been having a weird problem with my pc it was fine when I went to sleep last night I left it on but this morning it was off and it wont boot up at all the fans just spin. I was having trouble with the ram I have in it now Kingston value ram since i didnt set it to the correct speed in the bios and it made it do the same thing and then again when i pushed the timings too low. and put in my old 533mhzs ddr2 ram instead and then reset the bios and it booted up. I set the bios settings to default and let it boot and it froze at the windows login screen. So I restarted it and its back to not booting up again with either ram. Resetting the bios doesn't help. The last thing I did in the case was temporally put in a 80gb hdd to back up a bunch of stuff then I removed it plugged in my optical and the compy was working fine the last thing I did before going to sleep was chat on windows live messenger. This problem has got me stumped. Anyone have any idea what the heck is causing it? Thanks.

Sorry. I can't think of a more likely cause. I mean, the only other thing it could be is a dying mother board. Surge protectors are more like surge resistors. I've never known one that would completely protect the delicate electronics in a PC. I take it there was a storm in your area then? Look at it this way, at least it didn't catch fire. A friend of mine lost an old Gateway to a PSU fire and it nearly took his house. Now, I don't really know how to break it to ya, so here goes...in an absolutely worst case situation, when a PSU dies, it will often take the components attached to it right along with it. The mother board in most cases, but it can extend to the components plugged into the PSU/MOBO as well. The only way to see what is working an what isn't is to test the rig. A multimeter could test the PSU, but if you don't have one, a spare PSU could be swapped to see if the system will boot. Hence what I said before and crossing your fingers. Easier to replace a bad PSU, than a MOBO. :(

I know you said you don't have the money, but here are some fairly inexpensive PSU replacements...

Cooler Master 500Watt

Antec 500Watt

Thermaltake 500Watt

I wish I had some better news for ya. Again, sorry dude. :(

Edit - Had a thought. You say you swapped your optical drive for a hard drive, prior to all of this happening. Mayhap you bumped the power harness to the mother board? Or, maybe one of the RAM sticks? Check to see all the connections are good before loosing it... ;)

Sorry. I can't think of a more likely cause. I mean, the only other thing it could be is a dying mother board. Surge protectors are more like surge resistors. I've never known one that would completely protect the delicate electronics in a PC. I take it there was a storm in your area then? Look at it this way, at least it didn't catch fire. A friend of mine lost an old Gateway to a PSU fire and it nearly took his house. Now, I don't really know how to break it to ya, so here goes...in an absolutely worst case situation, when a PSU dies, it will often take the components attached to it right along with it. The mother board in most cases, but it can extend to the components plugged into the PSU/MOBO as well. The only way to see what is working an what isn't is to test the rig. A multimeter could test the PSU, but if you don't have one, a spare PSU could be swapped to see if the system will boot. Hence what I said before and crossing your fingers. Easier to replace a bad PSU, than a MOBO. :(

I know you said you don't have the money, but here are some fairly inexpensive PSU replacements...

Cooler Master 500Watt

Antec 500Watt

Thermaltake 500Watt

I wish I had some better news for ya. Again, sorry dude. :(

Edit - Had a thought. You say you swapped your optical drive for a hard drive, prior to all of this happening. Mayhap you bumped the power harness to the mother board? Or, maybe one of the RAM sticks? Check to see all the connections are good before loosing it... ;)

Sentinel672002

yes ive checked all those first. It did boot up once so hopefly that means my video card and hdd are fine the mobo shouldn't be too expensive and i was thinking about upgrading to a better nforce based one anyways. i just ahve no way to test what works as this pc is agp and socket 754. Its ironic i backed up JUST before this happened...

thanks for the links but im asutralian I buy my things from pccasegear

I also will never buy coolmaster master again for ANYTHING since it was the psu i had.

also there wasnt a storm there has been a bit of rain but nothing strom like i have no clue how it happened, but ill be suing coolermaster and the makers of the surge portector thats for darn sure.

sometimes a 20 pin works in a 24pin,

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=using+a+20pin+in+a+24pin&btnG=Search&meta=