It's alive, even after I shut down.

[misterd]

Originally Posted by Jack Rabbit

I am not quite sure what you said about the PSU. Are you using that crap 200W? A P133 PSU should not even be compatible with this system. Do you have or can you borrow a PSU tester? If the PSU is gone squirrelly then the next thing to do would be replace it.

I said it's an AT power supply and meant that it's not compatible. I'm gonna get him to swap the Quadro for an old Nvidia 6200 TC card. I live 50km away, so he can do that part. I have a PSU tester but really wasn't prepared to look at anything while I was out there. Or i'd have brought the tester and a pile of spare parts too.

[CMetaphor]

Originally Posted by MacJunky

This sounds just like the ACPI issues

MacJunky got it. Some AMD motherboards will have issues when shutting down if you don't have the latest chipset drivers AND the latest ACPI drivers install on your system.
Latest chipset driver:
Download Driver

ACPI driver... seems to be hard to find. Perhaps a Bios update will better help with ACPI functionality:
http://us.dfi.com.tw/Support/Downloa...FLAG=A&SITE=US

[DK2]

Originally Posted by misterd

Okay since nobody believes me that this is 100% not software, it still does it with the hard drive & optical drive unplugged.. Only thing left plugged in are the PNY Quadro FX4500, x2 3800+ 2 sticks of OCZ ram, DFI Lanparty motherboard and the power supply. As soon as power is applied to the PSU all fans spin full speed. Pressing the power button on the motherboard or shorting the power switch pins results in the fans spinning down to normal speeds, and the system posts. Does this make sense? Sure as heck doesn't to me.

No it doesn't, but its the bios that control the power on pins, not the power supply.
from what you describe its sounds like the 'software' in the bios is working or at least doing something.
fyi,
When you first apply voltage to a mother board the CPU gets a Hard reset and
starts fetching instructions from the bios, and starts initializing the I/O etc.
So your bios is running, and controlling the boards I/Os since it can detect the power on pins and spin
the fans down, likely based on internal temp readings.
I think a crap PSU might do what your saying but would also result in a non post.

[misterd]

Long forgotten update. Power supply on the unit gave out finally after leaving it on for awhile. Replaced PSU and the system now shuts off properly. Upon inpection of the PSU there were a couple swollen caps (I may try and replace them for fun someday - this will make Trodas smile)