Just cleaned the heat sink..now nothing!

[octoberman]

Yup, hence the fan, but the wife wasn't too happy about a fan blowing constantly, utility bill y'know, and I couldn't blame her, esp. since I saw that the CPU fan WAS kinda clogged, just thought a little cleaner upper and I'd be fine, now I'm where I am.

And I know better than to tell her it's her fault and if she'd let me just keep the fan on it everything would've been alright.

[patio]

And I know better than to tell her it's her fault and if she'd let me just keep the fan on it everything would've been alright. Wink

    

Try doing the same process over...use a can of compressed air to clean the heatsink and all fans...
Use a QTip to hold the fan blades in place while blasting them.
Then travel to Arctic Silvers website for excellent instructions on cleaning the heatsink and applying thermal compound.
Re=assemble everything and see.

[CyberHawk]

try reseating  the CPU. Maybe it moved somehow while pulling up the heatsink. Might be a contact issue.

[octoberman]

I really appreciate everyone's help in trying to get my system going again.  I pretty much followed the help sites and your suggestions to the letter.  Man, I had that CPU so clean not only could I read the Intel Pentium 4 logo but the serial number etched on it.  I got a nice layer of the thermal compound on it.  I made sure everything was seated, all the power connections and IDE cables and whatnot.  It's so baffling because everything seems to behave as it should, the drives start spinning, my CD and DVD drives light up, it just seems to not be able to find the files necessary to take it out of that standby mode where it starts Windows...or anything for that matter.  The power button light stays yellow instead of going to green when everything's copacetic and it recognizes the keyboard, mouse, monitor, loads the operating system, etc.  Now I'm pretty much resigned to the inevitable, and I take a little solace in that I'm sure I haven't lost anything from my hard drives, and when I do get it together enough for a new system I can throw them in there and have all my mp3's and Malaysia vacation pictures back.

Thanks again,
o'man