I've been thinking about this all day, and I suspect it's a problem w/memory or cpu, but a cheap video card could still prove me wrong, and I'd try that, if cheap enough.  I just think that something messed up w/the surge of electricity when you plugged in the exterior drive.  Since you plugged it in to a USB port, a spike crossed the mainboard and, maybe fried the CPU.  I hope I'm wrong.  Please let me know,
  Tom Murray

Kevin Winters <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  I have built many pc's before and run into countless problems along the way, but what i'm dealing with right now is rather unique and my need to get it resolved in a timely manor is more important now than it usually would be. I recently built a rig with the following specs.

WINDOWS VISTA 32BT ULTIMATE
MOTHERBOARD - ABIT IN9 32X-MAX NF680i 775 
PROCESSOR - CPU INTEL|C2D E6700 2.66G 775 4M R 
GRAPHICS CARD - VGA ATI 100-437807 X1950PRO 256MB R
MEMORY - 2GB RAM

My problem is, i setup the machine perfectly fine, it worked great for like 2-3 days. Then i decide to plug in my 120GB external western digital drive to xfer all my files and i plug it into the front USB port of my ThermalTake case and BAM the screen freaks out and all these weird characters and colors and lines spaz out my screens. I try rebooting and it just happens again. So i figure the first thing i can test is i remove my graphics card and put it in a different PCI slot, but the same thing happened. My next course of action is to go out and get a cheapo PCI graphics card and pop it in and see if its any different. My biggest worry is i shorted something on the MOBO or the processor is messed up somehow. If anyone has any insight on what this could be please let me know. For pictures of what the screen looks like you can go to the following links. I am SOOO desperate just to figure out what the hell needs to be fixed or replaced. I got all the parts from newegg and if
 i figure it out fast enough i might be able to return the faulty part. I'm also using the watercoolant system on the Kandalf LCS which worked fine as well. The real trigger appeared to be when i plugged in the USB. Also the mobo has that 2 digit digital code indicator and it goes through all the boot sequences without any problems and ends with the FF code which is the correct final code. I'm up for any input or ideas.

Here are the picture links:


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/Whathaveidone/IMG_4237.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/Whathaveidone/IMG_4238.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/Whathaveidone/IMG_4234.jpg

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        The NOSPIN Group has added a new feature on our website,
           web based bulletinboard for questions and answers:
              Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com