[Yodums]

Well anyhoo, I'll give you the condensed version of my long day.

I decided to format from Win2K to Windows XP because I had just bought a wireless network kit and wanted to take advantage of the most recent security function available which was only offered through Windows XP (WPA).

My network card was not cooperating very well with the OS change and it failed to detect the wireless network and I had narrowed it down to driver issues, OS issue, or hardware issue. Through my observations, the LED at the back of the network card turned on at boot-up but immediatly turned off when the computer got into Windows XP. Found that kind of awkward so I tried moving it up a PCI slot or two, and well, when taking the screw off to take it out of the slot, it fell on the motherboard. This wasn't very shocking since this happened to me, well, lots of times, and this time, I got a black screen with post code error, 26. Also, the PSU switch was off, cord was in, so the motherboard had to be grounded.

Flipping through the manual, it says post code errors 24-26H is "Reserved," (This is at the very back), and at the beginning of the manual it says post code 26 means my overclock is too crazy, clear cmos or press insert to fix. Of course, for the past year, I haven't even overclocked it a lil wee, so I don't understand what it could be saying...

Anyways, tried moving the jumper to the clear mode (jumpers 2&3) for 15mins and again, no boot, this time post code 25, and then 2-3 tries later, went back to 26.

Other than what was mentioned, I did not tamper with the motherboard at all, means I didn't upgrade my bios for like a year now etc. I tried stripping all ATA cables from the motherboard and taking out the sound card only leaving the PSU, motherboard, CPU, video card and one stick of ram (pulled 2 out), and once again, same message. So, think it's DOA? Might have to go out and buy an NF7-S tomorrow or something, sadly. I'm not too excited about blowing my week's allowance on a motherboard ATM!

Thanks

[Yodums]

False alarm...

Apparantly it was alive afterall and it was my video card that decided to give up (I didn't think this was the case because I have never even overclocked it!) Since I was overlooking the video card, I didn't test it although I did have a spare and I went out and bought an NF7-S v2.0. Needless to say I was ****ed and confused when it didn't boot. Tried adjusting the pots in the PSU because before when I overclocked, I had set it to pretty high to keep rails the same. But then I said hey, I have a P4 clip, put that in, no go. Although before, I did get it to boot once! Saw it boot up, did the CPU check, memory check etc.

Needless to say when I put some old cheapo GF2MX200 in, it worked! Anyways, guess my 8KHA+ is going to go into my dad's computer as I'm only running two modules right now and got a spare 256MB.. It'll be a good upgrade for him considering how cheap these chips are running for.