Hi guys, hopefully someone isn't tired yet of these problems, and can shed some light on this.

I built my PC about 3 months ago:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L rev. 2.0
PNY GeForce 8600GT 256MB
4x 1GB Crucial Ballistix DDRII-6400
1st harddrive: Seagate Barracuda 250 GB
2nd harddrive: Seagate Barracuda 500 GB
CoolerMaster RP-600-PCAR
Zalman CNPS9700 LED CPU Cooler
Sony DVD-ROM
LiteOn 20x lightscribe DVD burner
Vista Home Premium 64 SP1
The case has a 120 mm front fan and a 90 mm side fan.
I have a 19" Samsung LCD hooked up via a DVI cable, and use the on-board sound.

After putting it together and installing Windows it worked like a charm; fast, smooth and cool. I don't think I ever saw the CPU go up over 40 something, idle it was in the 30s. The air coming out of the CPU (120 mm fan) and what the Zalman blew out was always cool.

Anyway, yesterday, in the middle of browsing the internet, the screen suddenly went blank and the system rebooted but halted. I pushed reset, chose safe mode and it halted on 'Loading CRDISK.DLL (at least I think so, because after this one time, I couldn't reproduce the error).
Figuring it might just be a corrupt file, I popped in the Windows DVD and tried to repair, but that also hung at some point (couldn't tell you where exactly, windows isn't too detailed in what it's doing under the hood ).
I tried another reset, and figured I'd look around in the BIOS, but it was too late. The Gigabyte welcome screen showed, but nothing more. DEL, or F12 didn't work, nor did anything else. So I shut it off, let it sit overnight in case something got hot, and tried again this morning, but now nothing, just a blank screen. The only things that happen is:
1 PSU comes on
2 the Zalman starts spinning
3 the LEDs on the optical drives light up
4 the harddisks spin
5 the mouse lights up (hooked up to the PS/2 port

Nothing shows on the screen, no LEDs light up on the keyboard (in the PS/2 port via USB-PS/2 adapter). I've tried to reduce the memory to 2 GB in various combinations, with no effect. Took out the firewire PCI card I had installed a few weeks ago, but nothing. And frustatingly, I can't give you any readings, as the screen stays absolutely blank, just the LED happily blinking indicating no signal.

I would appreciate any ideas. Anybody???

Thanks very much!
Albert.

I mean 'power coming out of the PSU of course, not CPU. Sorry

Your PSU died. Your PSU was cr@py quality, imo. Should have gone with a Corsair or PP&C. Also try clearing CMOS.

Yes, maybe your PSU has died. Any strange beeps on POST?

The PSU could have died.

Also, Crucial Ram has had a lot of quality issues recently. So, the Ram might have died on you. You should use Memtest86+ and test your ram 1 stick at a time.

i'm with the others! it's either that cheesy PSU or the mem. but then again you can post to a small degree so it just may be the mem. Crucial as of late has been having allot of bad sticks circulating around so do the memtest86+ as recomended 1st. if ya see red then you got your culprit as this happened to me a couple months back and now i only buy my mem from FRYs so i wont have to deal with costly RMAs!

from this point on get paranoid and always test your mem out 1st!

Read what I have posted about RAM here:
GUIDE: Overclocking On P35-DS3L

Try another power supply, that one is a piece of junk. Looking at the internals on it, you are lucky it lasted this long. Buy a decent quality power supply.

First of all, I'd like to let you know I'm very grateful for your time and effort. Thanks so much!

Before I do anything, I would like to make sure of a few things. The ram test I wil do, but first I'll have to get the system to boot at all. So you guys are more or less convinced my power supply died? But then why do the drives and the fans still spin? Would you think it's only the motherboard section that's gone bad???
So, I gather your opinion on Coolermaster is not very favourable? Any suggestions as for another brand? And lastly, how do I clear the CMOS?

Thanks again,
Albert

Fans will spin as long as there is enough voltage to start them, it doesn't necessarily have to be the right voltage. The power supply could have either blown a circuit, the voltage regulation or filtering on one or more voltage may be severely degraded, etc. Look for burn or scorch marks on the cabling, in at least one instance with this PS someone found burnt cabling on the motherboard cabling. Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, Antec, Enermax are a few of the more reputable brands. Instructions on clearing the CMOS will be in the motherboard manual.
Be aware that not all PS from any given brand are created equal, a little research is required to find a decent power supply in the power range you require.

It is getting only very little power so the fans spin but can't boot due to low power.

To clear CMOS remove the batery.

For PSUs:

Budget (~$50): Antec,Thermaltake, Silverstone,FSP

Highend/Midrange: PP&C or Corsair,etc

All right, the PSU will be my first (and hopefully only) step toward recovery, and after that I’ll run the mem tests, as suggested. Once again, thank you very, very much. Your help is much appreciated. I guess one doesn’t get experienced enough building a PC every few years – and occasionally upgrading some…

Ok, as you guys suggested, I read up on PSUs, and decided to order the PC Power Silencer 610W. Seems like it'll fit my needs for some time to come. Hope you agree...

Looks like you made a great choice.

^+1

Got the PSU, installed it, repaired Windows, installed updates and everything works like a charm again. Thank you all one last time. What a great community this is.

The saga continues. As suggested I ran memtest86+ and I guess I had been lucky so far. The first three sticks were good (after 10 testcycles), but with the fourth one the system wouldn't even post. So OrangeGator and Doubletake33, you were right on, PSU and memory. Just sent an RMA request to Crucial, and running on 2Gig now, which isn't so bad for me. I'm not a heavy gamer, and no photo or video projects at the moment...

I have a similair problem (I think) so thought I'd piggy back on this thread.

I built my system 2 months ago:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (1.0)
AMD 4850e
SeaSonic ECO 300 Watt SFX12V
4x1 Crucial Ballistix DDR2
2xSamsung 750GB Spinpoint F1
DVD
Vista 32 Home Premium

Everything went relatively smoothly for my first build until about 2 weeks ago. I came down to an unresponsive PC. I really struggled repairing it from the Vista install disc as it would hang up a lot. After much fannagling I would get it to work only to have it crash a day or two later. Usually crashing to black screen or infinitely rebooting rather than BSOD. Sometimes it would get hung up on the STORPORT driver when trying to boot under SAFE mode so I thought maybe that was the problem since I had 4GB memory. This morning I came down to black screen and when I rebooted I got no beep from POST and no image on screen. Fans spin and lights on back of MOBO twinkle. HDD's and DVD spin and then nothing.

I've tried pulling memory and trying to boot with one, but it doesn't seem to help. Does this sound like the PSU as well? The SeaSonic was supposed to be good and although it's only 300W it should handle my low power setup. Any help??