Big problems, please help!!!

Hey all, I'm having some kind of a MAJOR cooling problem and I don't know what is going on.

I removed my Thermaltake Aquarius liquid cooling system today, (selling it on ebay and putting together my own system when I have time), and re-installed my original cooling system, my thermaltake volcano 9 smartfan

here's where the trouble started.

I try to boot up, the fan kicks into high gear almost INSTANTLY, then everything shuts down, and I get this annoying blaring alarm sound going duuuu-daaaaaa-duuuu-daaaa-duuuu-daaaa and it won't shut off till I turn the main power off.

The ONLY thing I had done differently this time was clean all the old thermal compound off the CPU with a paper towel, and put only a very small amount on (like just enough to cover the metal plate on the CPU after the heatsink had been applied).

after a few attempted reboots, remounts of the heatsink/fan, etc, the system let me get into the BIOS (strangely enough). I went to PC Health status, and the PC is going from 40 C to 65 C like REALLY fast. All the while, my fan which always worked spectacularly for me, is chugging away and unable to keep the damn thing cool.

Then I took my chip out and put in my old chip, AMD Thunderbird 1.333 ghz and tried to boot that up, and wouldn't you know it, almost the same damn thing happened!!! This one isn't getting quite so hot, and the system never actually shut down on me, but it is still getting up to 61 C just looking at the BIOS, and normally this chip (with this fan) never got past 58.

In the meantime, I'm unable to boot into windows XP because its giving me some kind of a hard error and shuts off right away so i don't know what the problem is. i'd like to reinstall XP or at least boot into a command prompt and copy my DVD HD backup over and see what happens then..

but I still don't know what the hell is going on with my CPU's... what could be the problem?!?! everything is exactly the same as it always was!

PS. I ditched the idea of only using a very small amount of compound, and went back to my usual amount, and still am having the same problem.

someone help

From the sounds of all the beeps you're getting at startup you have bigger problems. Maximum PC had a troubleshooting article in it about 4/5 ? months ago that explained all the beeps for all the major mobo manufacturers. See if you can lay your hands on an issue. Good thing to have on hand anyway.

I haven't used an NF7 mobo, but it sounds like the heatsink is getting misaligned, and yes I saw that you tried a few times...

But it isn't difficult to get a heatsink cocked just enough to keep from frying a chip but still overheating in seconds.

Check very carefully to be sure that the heatsink is not backwards or sitting on the "step" on the side of the socket.

The alarm is the overheating alarm... I had similar problems with an SK-7, I took it off and put it on again and everything was fine.

You sure you didnt chip the core, that can cause this. if you have a different HSF try it instead. Even a stock one.

um.. uh... I had the heatsink mounted improperly.. lets all just forget this ever happened k? lol <: )

PS. everything is fine, just had to fix the mounting