My computer is dead :(

I woke up a few days ago and my computer was off (I leave it on 24/7). I went to turn it on and all of the lights started to come on for a split second then everything shut off again. It didn't even try to boot. It just turned on and immediately turned off again. My other computer that sits on the other side of my desk was fine. I tested the power supply and it was fine. I checked the motherboard for damage to the capacitors and didn't see anything that was visible. I didn't smell anything out of the ordinary. It wasn't storming/raining that night. I wasn't running any intensive programs. I clean it regularly. I've never had any other problems (not a single lockup or restart since I built it almost a year ago and it passed all of the stability tests that I threw at it).

Before I go spending hundreds of dollars trying to find the problem does anyone have any ideas on where I should start looking or what could have gone wrong? I might have missed something. Here are the specs:

P4 2.8e
ECS 848P-A vs 1.0
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
2x512 Patriot PC3200
250 gig wd hd
Samsung DVD Burner
LG DVD/CD RW combo

unplug everything (including CPU) and reseat everything,
then try a new AGP card
then, try a new...ewww ECS, buy a new motherboard or check with a buddy who has a socket 478 (that's what ya got right?) and test the CPU
what is your PSU?

I'm really worried that it's the motherboard. If that's the case and I have to replace it then I have to format my hard drive as well right?

Artyboy said:

I'm really worried that it's the motherboard. If that's the case and I have to replace it then I have to format my hard drive as well right?

Click to expand...

Try not to get ahead of yourself. If you replace it with the same model board then no you don't need to reformat. If you worried about recovering your data there are ways of doing it before you reformat. For the record, was your other computer running? If so, that pretty well eliminates a power surge as the culprit. Good luck with it.