This may seem obvious, but I've sold unassembled systems in the past and had
several people with the same type of problem. Are you sure that the CPU is
fully plugged in? It has been a while but I think that most although not all
motherboards have two slots or rails that the CPU slides into and it should
slide down so that the two snaps on the top of the CPU click or snap into the
locked position. I only mention this because the system stopped functioning
once the fan was removed which might move the CPU around if it were not
properly installed.

Dennis Noble
www.citiesetc.com

<< There's one more little episode I need to tell you guys about before I
turn it over to you. At first I was trying to get it to boot up without the
heatsink and fan on the CPU. I went ahead and put the heatsink and fan on the
CPU and plugged the fan connector into the mainboard, Shazam! It posted up
and stayed alive long enough for me to set the bios, partition and format the
drive, and install Win98. I thought my problems were over...
 I removed the heatsink and fan unit to put some thermal paste on it, and
when I put the CPU back into the socket, the machine was dead again, just
like before. I've reseated everything again and tried everything I know but
I'm all out of ideas, completely stumped.

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