Is my mobo dead?

I have a XFX 780i mobo. I came home from work yesterday (I had fully shut down my pc the night before), and after booting up (intilizing peripherals, etc.), it gave me the wonderful "winload.exe is missing or corrupt" error. After about two hours, I was able to get into the BIOS and make it boot from my Vista OEM disc, and successfully perform a windows repair to the file. Windows loaded, and I carefully saved some important files, then proceeded to try to reboot.

As far as I can remember (I've been at this for many hours), it would randomly hang on different POST codes, from C1 to C3 to C1 and beeping to claiming that the floppy drive had the wrong media (even though I didn't have a floppy drive ever) to simply a constant 'FF' code. Currently, it's stuck on FF with no codes before or after it. I just simply turn on the power, and it's "FF".

Let me back up a tad. I called XFX support, and they said it might be the CPU power connector not being plugged in all the way. Sure enough - it wasn't in all the way! Good, I thought, now everything will be okay! (I thought all the random POST codes and beeping was from the power connector to the CPU.) I was wrong. Same old FF code. Right now (and ever since last night), I have only one stick of RAM (2gb), video card, cpu (obviously), sound card, WLAN pci card, one IDE optical drive, one SATA optical drive, and my two 500gb hdd's in RAID on SATA.

I was thinking it might be a dead mobo battery considering the C1 post code, but a dead mobo battery is actually a '1C' code.

A few other things that have happened:

>Trying to remove the CMOS battery while running while it hung on error code C1 (I think), and it started up after it jiggled a little bit.
>Reset the BIOS about 13 million times, with the 'CLEAR_CMOS' jumper and the little button on the mobo, both with the PSU plugged in, and without.
>PSU lights (the ones on the actual PSU) intermittently blink randomly, sometimes not if I wiggle it a little.
>Let the thing sit with the power on for over 15 minutes without the CMOS battery installed to see if I could reset the BIOS fully.
>Tried a different mobo battery that I know works with no luck.
>Swapped out video cards (I have two for sli)
>Swapped out all four RAM sticks.
>Unplugged all devices whatsoever (internal and external).
>Tried to boot from iso disc burned from XFX support site to flash BIOS - won't even get to boot.
>There is no video display whatsoever since last night when it ran for a short while (keep in mind that it worked fine when it was on, but to start it up is another story! )
>Came very close to googling the term, "How to blow up your computer"

MY THREE MAIN QUESTIONS:

Is it the PSU?
>The PSU has randomly blinked its lights at me
>The PSU wasn't plugged in all the way to the CPU socket - did it short out?
>The PSU was running on 'Turbo 12v' mode ever since I built the pc in May (switched it to Normal 12v this afternoon with no apparent difference)
>The PSU has been good for its whole life, and I've never had any problems with it

Is it the mobo?
>The mobo was replaced/RMA'ed just a month ago (so it should be brand new - which it looked like it was)
>The mobo was modded by me with NB, SB, and MOSFET aftermarket heatsinks and one fan
>The mobo has jumped from several different POST error codes over the last day; now it's (seemingly) stuck on 'FF'

Is it the BIOS chip?
>How could the BIOS chip get corrupted? Is this common at all?
>Should I get a new BIOS chip? - The more I think about this question, the more I think it would solve a lot of my POST code errors and such...

How did 'winload.exe' get corrupted? Is this error related to viruses? I thought I had my pc protected...and I wasn't hibernating it over and over, so where did the corruption come from?

I'm really at a loss with all this. I don't/wouldn't know which to replace - the motherboard or the power supply. I'm kind of leaning towards the mobo. But I can't RMA it because of the modifications I did with the NB, SB, and MOSFET cooling..

AND, sorry for the ridiculously long complaint - thanks for reading all of it.

simm

bump - does anyone have any ideas??

to be honest with you i would try the basic tests which don't costa dime, try only one stick of ram, reseating processor ect.....

It seems I've tried everything except reseating the processor as you suggested...I think I'll try that tonight...thanks, nicayotte.

Nope, no go with the CPU reseating. Thanks though...any other suggestions? I'm starting to think that it might the actual BIOS chip - what do you guys think?

Try pushing in on the bios chip. I've heard of it coming out of the socket and then give it a try

I know this is weird but i had a D1 and a C1 error on my EVGA 750i, after doing some research i removed the northbridge heatsinks along with any heatsinks on the motherboard, cleaned them and reapplied the appropriate amount of thermal paste (ceramic or arctic silver) and errors went away and my system worked again. I would give this a shot if you have ceramic and normal arctic silver thermalpaste. It may be a shot in the dark but it also rules that out 8-(

I haven't tried that yet, nicayotte...How do I remove the actual BIOS chip?? I tried a little with some paper clips, but it didn't really move - do I need a special tool?

Well, I think I've tried everything...time to order a new mobo. :'(

(FYI: don't buy this motherboard - the NB cooling is the dumbest design ever: a LOUD fan blowing the hottest air from the NB ONTO the top video card, making the vid card about 6°c hotter. Bummer is, I can't replace it with a different one model or chipset without re-installing windows...)

flip the fan over if possible. pull the hot air away from the vid card.

I've tried that...works worse...

Part of this whole problem was probably from me installing aftermarket cooling for the MOSFET, NB, and SB...I just didn't want a hot video card and NB.

But I don't see how this might have caused 'winload.exe' to corrupt, then proceed to mess up my mobo... HMMMMM...

yea never herd of that happening..... sorry to hear you gotta shell out some bread to get your machine working

I personally think the biggest clue is "The PSU has randomly blinked its lights at me". The PSU shouldn't care about anything except getting getting good AC input, getting the signal to turn on, supplying the power and checking for over-current loads. Blinking lights on a PSU is a bad sign IMO and should be looked at first.

Something not right in having steady power supplied to the system will have you chasing your tail for a long time.

C1 errors on nvidia chipset boards typically lead to memory. i had some issues with bad memory back in the day using 4 SLI ready sticks. what a nightmare. if you are able to run on 1 stick fine then it has to be memory. do a bios update if possible because it will fix any bios corruption issues.

Thanks for all your advice. I ordered a new mobo, and it's been running for the past two weeks. The lights on my PSU were blinking at me (I found out later) because I was troubleshooting, and they weren't plugged in all the way. And it wasn't the memory, which I wish it was because it's SO cheap these days. No, I'm using 4 sticks of RAM (see sig).

Well, I hope it works for at least a little while longer!