My computer has died :( HELP PLEASE

Yesterday morning I fired the comp up and went down to breakfast.

When I returned to it it was dead (ish) and the room stank of electrical burn.

I opened it up - there was still power to USB and the mobo LED was on but no boot.

I assumed it was the PSU that had fried so today I plumbed in a new one.

Now with the new one:
mobo LED is lit
power to USB OK
no boot but case and CPU fans twitch when I go for boot

I am stumped

mobo is Asus P5WDH Deluxe and I really don't want to have to rebuild and upgrade - I don't have the cash and I'll lose a PCI slot and I don't want the hassle of re-installing and authorising everything (programs and OS are on same partition :( )


HELP!!

What has gone wrong with my 'puter?
What should I try next?

Meh, is good chance that you got really burned, by the sound - but maybe you got lucky: if you get no post beeps at all, take out the video card first and reboot - then the memory - still no beeps - urgh, probably the CPU.

If you do get any post beeps, there's the lists:

http://www.technick.net/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=guide_beep_codes

ORIGINAL: Roflcopter

Meh, is good chance that you got really burned, by the sound - but maybe you got lucky: if you get no post beeps at all, take out the video card first and reboot - then the memory - still no beeps - urgh, probably the CPU.

If you do get any post beeps, there's the lists:

http://www.technick.net/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=guide_beep_codes

No POST beeps - it doesn't get that far
The fans twitch the PSU LED kights momentarily

removed video card = no change
removed RAM = no change

what next?

what next?

Remove mobo...

Remove it and do what with it?

If you know the PS is OK, the next logical culprit is the motherboard.
You don't have much of a choice but to swap it out...

Maybe check that, just to be sure, that you didn't forget some secondary molex for your Mobo.

Feel bad for you - just last night it crossed my mind, that it would come at a *very* inopportune time for me, ATM - and I just wished it away. To 3 other people, apparently.

Looks like I'm now in the market for a new mobo, cpu and RAM ( my current RAM is only 533MHz ie slower than most current RAM).

I think I'd prefer to stick to a S775 board so i could continue to use my current excellent cooler but do not know what's available these days and what miight work well together.

I like Asus products.

How might replacement of the mobo cpu & RAM effect my XP Pro OEM installation?

Will I have to go for a full re-install?

Short answer, your OS is registered to interact with your old hardware. If you were to simply plug in your OS disk onto a new rig, you're going to run into a lot of driver issues - specifically, Windows, if it loads up, will detect all the new hardware configurations which will need to be installed more or less manually. Meanwhile, all of your old driver, hardware, and registry settings specific to your old hardware will be creeping around behind the scenes. Probably the best thing to do would be a clean OS install. You could also get away with a reinstall on top of your old OS. This should allow you to retain all of your non-windows settings.