I feel like a complete idiot. I just got done building a new rig, and was shutting down the machine for the night, I shut down windows and while it was shutting down walked around my table to put the side cover on and accidentally hit the switch on the power supply with my foot. Windows hadn't finished shutting down, but when I went to restart it to see if everything was OK I get nothing at all when I hit the power button, I have an led on the mobo and my lan card is lit up, but no go on anything else. Any help would be appreciated....

After a little more investigating, I was able to get it to turn on. My board is an msi with a power/reset and clear cmos buttons on it. it powers up but I think windows is courupted, it just loops at the boot screen. But the front panel buttons don't work, so I am thinking it is the board itself. Would that be a correct assumption?

I don't see how yanking the plug could destroy a motherboard. It is more likely your copy of Windows is corrupt. You could do a Michael Stevens XP Repair Install or a Michael Stevens XP Clean Install, but since you just built this last night, meaning you don't have months or years worth of data of configurations to re-do, I think you should start over, with a fresh install - AFTER ensuring you have everything connected properly.

Originally Posted by Digerati

I don't see how yanking the plug could destroy a motherboard. It is more likely your copy of Windows is corrupt. You could do a Michael Stevens XP Repair Install or a Michael Stevens XP Clean Install, but since you just built this last night, meaning you don't have months or years worth of data of configurations to re-do, I think you should start over, with a fresh install - AFTER ensuring you have everything connected properly.

I think somehow the timing of accidentally killing the power did some damage to the front panel connections on the motherboard, because the power and reset button on the case don't work at all. the only way I can turn it on now is to manually turn it on from the power button on the motherboard. I have tried again and again to get them to work but they are just totally unresponsive. Yeah your right about the data, it's only a few hours of transferring stuff back.From the start the mother board was actually acting a little dodgy to begin with. I know this sounds really weird, but that's how a lot of stuff works out for me (one of a kind odd stuff). Could it be possible that if timed just right it could have caused a surge that damaged the board? Thanks for the reply, look forward to hearing back from you.

I think somehow the timing of accidentally killing the power did some damage to the front panel connections on the motherboard, because the power and reset button on the case don't work at all.

All the front panel buttons do is remotely short the two pins on the motherboard's Front I/O Panel header. This signals the power supply to power up. Find those two pins and if shorting them causes it to boot correctly, your problem is not your motherboard, and probably not the power supply - You need to make sure all power connections from the PSU to the motherboard are correct, and tightly secured. Then verify the case's front panel connections are correctly attached to the motherboard's front I/O panel header.

Could it be possible that if timed just right it could have caused a surge that damaged the board?

By killing the power? Once power is removed, there will be no surges, unless Mother Nature has something against you, in which case, unplugging from the wall is your only hope! It is more likely when you killed the power before

Thanks a lot for your suggestion, I will try that and let you know how it goes.