I am building a new system - it started up and loaded to Windows ME (I was going to upgrade to XP) It loaded all available drivers... and was fine... I left it on to look for the additional drivers... about 5-10 minutes later, I looked at the it and all the fans and lights were on in the case, but the monitor had gone blank- looked like it was asleep- tried to move the mouse and keyboard to wake it up to no avail... I then hit reset- it started to load everything back up and then everything powered down. Trying to repower from this point on, I heard a "PFFT" coming from my power supply and no power was sent to the system (although the MB light would come on before I hit the main power switch)

I bought a power supply tester- and my power supply passed.. I connect components 1 by 1 to the PS- the first was the 4pin ATX power connector- "PFFT" caused the PS to shut down- I was successful at connecting everything else (fans, CD, HD) without shorting the PS. As 1 last test- I put a second PS onto the system- same results... everytime I connect to the 4-pin ATX (located adjacent to the CPU socket) it would short and shut down the PS. SO, I am inclined to think that I have a deffective MB or CPU... Anyone have any insite on what I should do next- if I put the CPU onto another MB to test it and the CPU is bad- will it hurt the other MB?

Here are the specs on my system:

Power supply- 420W
MB: AOPEN MX4SG-L 865G 800MHz 2DDR400/VGA64MB/8X/GB/SATA/M-ATX
CPU: Intel Pentium 4/ 3.0C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache, Hyper Threading Technology
RAM: 1GB Corsair PC3200 DDR
Tower: RAIDMAX Black 10-bay Case with 420W Power Supply, Model "ATX-868WBP"
Video: Radeon 9800pro

HELP HELP - PLEASE HELP )

you were plugging these things in one at a time with the computer on? i think you need a new power supply, even though whatever gizmo you bought said it was good.

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MNaybe the board is grounded to the case by the small post underneath it. Check if they are all aligned with the hole on the mobo. count them in the case and check how many get screw in. Else, there is molex->4pins adapter that are sold to be able to use PS without 4 pins adapter on P4 boards. You can try to get one or do one by yourself to check if it is the motherboard or this particuliar PS's connector thatis in trouble.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

I tried a new power supply with the same results... I also removed the MB from the case and placed it on an insulated surface to ensure there was no hard grounding to the case. Thanks for the input- I will look into the alternate p4 power supply connector.