Me - 1, My Computer - 16.7 Million

So my computer is officially toast.  For quite a while now, it was teetering on he edge of non workdom, and finally gave up today.  The battle has been long and hard, but much like the current war in Iraq, it was an unwinnable situation.  Here is the story.

It all started a couple of years ago when it would reboot itself while I was playing The Sims 2.  So, since it's a homebuild, I began the troubleshooting process.  I never could pinpoint the exact problem, so I just stopped playing The Sims (that was the only time it would reboot).  Problem avoidance worked pretty good.  I recently started trying to play more games, and the problem resurfaced.  Resurfaced with a vengance it did, as the problem games, and other programs, grew in numbers:  The Sims 2, SimCity 4, Return to Wolfenstein, Oblivion, and websites running lots of scripts.  But I never could figure out why I could run Half Life 2, Civ 4, and Farenheit with no problems, weird.

Last week my main hard drive keeled over.  Luckily I had a spare hanging around leftover from my attempt at a RAID array.  My computer never seemed to want a RAID array, so I shevled that project after lots of cursing and failed attempts.  So I went through the ordeal of reinstalling Windows, and other programs I reguarly use.  I won that battle, but the war was still on.

Yesterday, my dad decided he'd get me a "new" motherboard since I was sure my motherboard was the source of my woes.  I say "new" because there is no such thing as a new name brand Socket A motherboard.  We went out, retrieved one that seemed to fit the bill, and I proceeded with the upgrading process when we got back in.  After it was in I went to start it up, and... nothing.  My computer didn't do anything, well, not nothing, it did discharge it's capacitors when I removed power, but that was it.  Not one fan spun, the hard drives didn't whirr, and the floppy didn't make that annoying brrrrrrr brrr sound.  I thought it was just a dead board, so tore it out and replaced my old board.  This time the fans spun for a about a second, and then stopped.  Now I realized there was a big problem.

Further investigation led to a loose (actually it was far beyond loose, more like it wasn't going to connect with anything no matter what) wire a harness that connects my power supply to the motherboard.  Seemed like a replacement of that part would sove all problems.  I retreived this part today, installed it with my old motherboard, and ..... the fans spun, the computer POSTed (the beep you hear when you boot a computer), returned a floppy drive failed error, and shut down.  Afterwards the computer wouldn't POST at all, usually indicative of a fried motherboard.  So, I reinstalled the new one.  This time nothing happened, and I didn't hear the capacitors discharge, so I tried a spare power supply that I had.  Worked like a champ, until the awful POST code that was returned.  Turns out I didn't put enough thermal paste between the CPU and heatsink, and this code was the "OMG YOUR CPU IS GONNA FRY!! I'M SHUTTING DOWN BEFORE YOU MELT THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM!!" warning.  After putting enough paste on, the computer POSTed beautifully.  Then, the real barrier hit -- Windows.  Windows doesn't like something I did, and returns a "your hardware is messed up, replace the hardware you just installed" error.  Well, since it's a motherboard, technically everything is considered new.  I don't even know how to begin troubleshooting this, I can't even boot in Safe Mode (including only the command prompt), or run Windows Setup, so something is messed up bigtime.  I've chalked it up as broken, I have not the patience to deal with this, and I pulled out my laptop so I can get to the internet.  The quest for the next version of my computer has begun, and I'll begin sourcing parts as funds allow.  Just sucks that I have to use my laptop again.