Here is what happened... i left my computer on while i was away for a week... i came back and the commuter is off... so thinking that it's a sleep i tried to turn it back on and nothing happens. i tried shutting off power supply and turning it back on and nothing. thinking it's a hardware problem, i unplugged everything extra (even keyboard and mouse) and still nothing. i ended up taking everything out of the computer down to motherboard and power supply and still nothing. Power supply seemed to be working fine (i checked by shorting a Green and ground wire)... so in desperation i started messing with the kill switch on the power supply shorting it while holding a casing power button down. and after about 5 min of doing so the computer fired up.... what the @#$%@#?!?!?!?!!?... then everything seem to be working "some what" ok (except for some USB ports) and was doing so until i shut it off again. And now same thing all over again.

My thoughts it's a faulty motherboard, but before i buy a replacement, i wanted to see if anyone else thinks the same... or any other ideas??? thanks

oh yeah... and at one point it would freeze during POST...

P.S. i tried resetting POST... that didn't do anything

The Mother board is ASUS P4P800-E (about 5 years old)

Does the board beep?

Try starting with the RAM removed.

Does it beep now?

Originally Posted by jephree

Does the board beep?

Try starting with the RAM removed.

Does it beep now?

nope nothing happens... no beeps, none of the fans working, the only thing that is always working is the little like on the motherboard that indicates that motherboard has power.

it almost looks like the power button is broken... (but it's not, i checked)

That motherboard LED is indicating some minimal power along with the CMOS battery.

The fact that the fans are not running would more likely make the PSU suspect.

Does the PSU fan work?

If the board were getting full power it should beep but regarding the fans issue I would suspect the PSU first.

Do you have another PSU to try?

You can also get a legitimate tester as seen here:

PSU Tester

........................................

FrozenCPU ATX 2.0 Ultimate LCD Power Supply Tester (20/24 pin ATX, SATA, P4, Xeon, PCI-E, Floppy, 4 pin) - FrozenCPU.com

The LED on the motherboard only means the power supply is supplying 5V - it does not mean it is supplying 12V or 3.3V.

I would try another supply.

ok, i kida figured out what was wrong with it... but still not 100%... you guys were right the problem was related to PSU, but it wasn't the PSU it self that was the problem. There is (what seems like) a loose connection on to the motherboard. however, it's not at all visible... the PSU is only 6 month old and all the cables are brand new. i got it to fire up and work by finagling connection to the mother board for about 5 min, but now the USB keyboard wont work... ahhhh :-/ this is already vista f**king up.... well, at least the original problem was solved... Thank you very much!

but now the USB keyboard wont work... ahhhh :-/ this is already vista

USB keyboards are hardware - not sure you can blame Vista for this. This could still be related to your power problems.

Originally Posted by Digerati

USB keyboards are hardware - not sure you can blame Vista for this. This could still be related to your power problems.

yeah i know, but the keyboard is working fine on any other computer i checked, and USB ports seem to be working fine too. it can't find the drivers for the keyboard (it's a wireless USB keyboard) even though its plug-n-play. :-/

any ideas? could it be that the USB port is not getting enough power?

and USB ports seem to be working fine too

could it be that the USB port is not getting enough power?

I would dig up an old PS/2 keyboard for a test.