No way to boot

[sciwhiz]

Hello everyone

I recently had a power surge in my computer (or so it seems, the screen flickered and frozewhile watching animes on crunchyroll) and after doing a hard reset, I was unable to boot from my usual windows hard drive(XP Pro. It froze when you have the windows splash screen with the blue loading bar).
Thinking that I had killed my boot sector or my MBR, I popped in the windows install cd and did the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR repair commands. Windows still could not boot.
So maybe I fried some part of the hard drive plates. So I unplugged my windows hard drive and plugged in my ubuntu linux one(which was disconnected previously, both power and data). This one froze right before the GRUB menu screen.
Next, I tried booting Slax and Knoppix by USB, which didn't.
Then, I popped in the Ubuntu Live CD, but it froze right after the 30 second timer. Something was definitely weird here since it could boot the XP pro cd no problem but couldn't do anything with the Live CD.
I tried swapping out my RAMs with other ones, but it did the same thing.
Also, the reset button didn't work after each freeze. It would clear everything away from the screen, but would not reboot. I had to power down each time.

As such, I have determined that the defective piece must be the CPU or the motherboard. But owning but one S775 setup, I cannot check out which one is at fault. So I need help to determine which one I should replace.

My setup:
Pentium D 840 3.2Ghz
Gigabyte GA-8I945P-G
OCZ XTC Gold 2 gig
XFX 7900 GS Xtreme
OCZ Modstream 520 W
2X LG GA-H10N DVD burners
WD caviar SE 160gig 16mb Cache

It could also be my video card or my screen, but I don't think that would be it.

[Babrbarossa]

Did you hear any pop when the power surge hit?

[sciwhiz]

not really, I was watching videos at the time, so I just sorta sensed the sound of a teleporter and saw my screen flicker.

[3.0charlie]

I don't believe it's your CPU - it is booting. The power surge may have fried some part of your board and/or your PSU, which creates instability. What I don't like is the fact that the Reset button doesn't work....

[enaberif]

Anytime you are hit with a surge or spike you can do damage to components without even knowing it.

With a bareboard, cpu, ram,video and I'd see if it posts and works ok and go from there. Throw a hard drive on and see what happens, then a cd-rom on and see what happens again.

[Babrbarossa]

Is that a solid state capacitor mobo?

My guess is mobo or PSU, but don't take it to the bank

[sciwhiz]

It can post just fine with the 4 basic elements, all the way untill it searches for media to boot. It will not boot from anything except the windows installer CD. I haven't tried the floppy drive yet though..

[Babrbarossa]

go into your bios and remove the dvdrom from the boot priority list an try it

[sciwhiz]

Thanks for the quick responses everyone. No its not a solid state cap mobo. I'll try switching out the PSU for now.

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by sciwhiz

Thanks for the quick responses everyone. No its not a solid state cap mobo. I'll try switching out the PSU for now.

What you have to understand tho is its easy for a power surge/spike to damage a hard drive or boot device enough that it can't boot.

I've seen situations where hard drives or floppies that have been damaged will not allow a system to post into a OS