Too cold to start ?

Okay so i live in Minnesota, love the cold. And i have my computers back, more or less inside the window. This window has just a screen to the outside air. For those who don't live up the far north it gets down right cold. When i have my computer on load temps with the window closed it gets to be about 60C off load about 45C...when the window is open i get load temps to about 35C and off load about 20c . All of this, i might add, is only with air cooling.

My question to everyone is this i left my window open one after noon when, in the sun, it got to about 30F or -1C and my room does not face the sun. So my room, for lack of a better word, was very cold. When i went to turn my computer on it sounded normal but didn't beep (guessing didn't even POST).

Can a computer be too cold to even start? Also on the flip side can it ever be to warm to start?

I have turned on my Lappy at about 1 C, and it was still okay.
I heard its REALLY bad for a HDD to start at a negative temperature.
Maybe condensation killed your PC?

I remember a thread where a person tried to OC a PC in a freezer. His HDD died in 20 minutes.

I wouldn't suspect condensation, because the ambient around the mobo was too cold to begin with, unless you closed the window and let the warm air at it, which in that case may condense on cold metal parts. I would suspect either the hard drive or some faulty capacitors on the mobo or power supply.
I have the same situation here in the northeast, where night time temps drop into the 20s or so. with the window cracked, and my puter right below it, i get ambients sometimes as low as 4ºC, and idle temps around 12ºC.

just to let you know its really easy for a comp to be to cold to boot. but not be damaged. ive seen it happen many times. where i work we have a few comps that in cased in styrafoam becasue when it got to cold outside they would not boot. they would work fine as long as they were brought back up to a decent temp. using say a space heater and styrafoam. so the **** should be fine
3vil

Thermal diodes are often programmed with an unsigned number because they don't expect the components to ever experience below-zero temperatures. Here's the problem with using an unsigned number, if the diodes range is 1 to 256, then -1 = 255, and hence thermal protection kicks in because the system thinks its at 255 degrees

My amd 3000+ shuts down the computer as soon as it hits -1 and if I watch it in the bios as it happens I briefly see the temp reading say 255

holy cow adamwinn that is really strange.

What i found that works is to just leave the computer "running" with out POSTing and let it warm up a bit. after about 1-2 min reboot and watch the computer start up very nice. Thanx