a7v8x problem

Recently my friend purchased the A7v8x (Lan and raid) and decided to get a new cpu cooler. His choice was the Volcano 9. At the time he was running as follows:
A7v8x
Athlon 266 1.4
Unknown 350Watt power supply
WD 100 gig 7200RPM on the promise RAID controller
Mitsumi 1.44 floppy drive
HP 8x cd-r --------- on the primary IDE controller
Acer 16X DVD Rom ---
512megs of Crucial PC2700 in one stick
PNY GeForce4 MX 240
Sound Blaster Live X-Gamer
2 PC mods cold cathodes

The problem he ran into was that he... ahem... accidentially applied the new volcano to the processor with the protective paper still covering the adhesive on the Volcano.... and before post on the next boot he noticed a sweet burning smell and yanked the power. Ever since his board will not make it past the first beep of post before shutting itself off. We replaced the old processor with a new XP2000 and have the same problem. My first impression is that the origional processor burning up may have damaged the thermometer on the board and causes the C.O.P. to automatically shut off the entire system before POST. We're really perturbed by this one so any ideas on what may be causing this or what we can do about it would be appreciated. If it is the thermometer on the board it should be as easy as cutting a trace