So I took it all apart and fixed the grounding issue (I hadn’t put a piece of mylar over 2 pieces of metal that stuck up underneath the motherboard. 

However now I could not get the system to turn on.  I spent 2 days trying to get it on and finally I got it back on, however there was no video and no system beeps for anything unless the ram was removed. 

This all pointed to it being the motherboard having gotten messed up when I took it apart so I sent it back.  They sent me another one with a note saying “tested/working” so I tried to turn it on and again couldn’t get video to work.  So I went and got another video card and various other test parts.  To no avail, still no video.  So I figured they sent me the same board and it was still dead so I bought a new board $330 (the ONLY board that would work with my processor that I could buy at a retail store).  Still no matter what part I swapped out I could not get it to work. 

I had replaced every single part except the water cooling (which is a pain in the ass to work with when you are tearing apart and rebuilding a computer over and over… though perhaps not as much as thermal compound).  I had reset CMOS and done every little trick in the book to make this fucker boot with video but it wouldn’t do it. 

So that’s actually the compressed version of the troubleshooting.  You can find the full version at various tech forums throughout the web because I was hitting my last nerve on this one.

So I bought a new less-shitty laptop and sold my other one to my roommate.  The giant godlike computer has just sat in a corner collecting a LOT of dust for a couple months. 

I have since rigged my laptop up to use my 24″ monitor and turned the other monitor into my tv (when my projector bulb exploded).  I had just put my first ad on Craigslist to try to sell my processor before all it’s value was gone (since at this point it’s already worth only half of what it was worth when it was purchased), when my friend offered to try to fix it. 

He had fixed a lot of computers in the past and I had 0 to lose, so I offered him dinner and eternal gratitude if he could fix it. 

So he was here early in the day and we tore the computer down again and pulled every single thing out of the case and went through all the troubleshooting steps all over again. 

He wanted me to buy some ram and another video card for testing.  I grumbled and said I had already tested them, but whatever he was the one fixing it now.  So I bought the cheapest ram that would go in my machine ($200… yes, seriously that was the cheapest one that Fry’s Electronics would sell me) and another video card. 

Brought it back and we fucked with it for awhile and lo and behold it half ass turned on and gave some video. 

What that means is that the brand new video card I bought to test a couple months earlier was DOA.  A brand new dead card.  Either that or my motherboard had fried it instantly. 

Well the celebration couldn’t quite begin because no matter what OS I tried to install it started taking a shit during install.  Eventually I got XP installed, however all was not good with the world.   The random resetting problem kicked in. 

This was my original problem before I blamed grounding and tore the system apart.  Ram seemed like it could be the issue but the other ram we got was doing the same bullshit.  So we started fucking with the bios.  The memory was already being underclocked to 1333 instead of 1600, however the voltage was at 1.54 instead of 1.9 as was recommended by the ram maker.  So we increased the volatage, however this just caused the computer to not turn on at all.  Took awhile to even get the bios cleared and get it back on. 

Finally my friend cut down the speed of the ram to 1066 and we ran the system and it seemed to be working fine.  So we ran some burn in tests to juice the shit out of the system and Try to make it crash, however it wouldn’t. 

Now this is bullshit.  I have to run ram rated at 1600 at 1066 !!!!!!~~!!!   WTF !~@~~~~~ 

Whatever, I am just going to give a huge recommendation NOT to buy “bleeding edge” components that are so new that ONLY Intel makes motherboards for them.  I have never had any bad luck with Abit boards, and Asus boards normally have a couple quirks but overall work well.  This Intel board has the newest bios updates etc… but can’t handle ram that is supposed to work in it.

So now I have to mail my video card back to newegg for a replacement and try to return the video card I am currently using to Fry’s. 
</technical rant>

XP can ONLY use 3.24 gigs of my 4 gigs of ram, and it obviously can’t run at 64 bit.  However the speed of browsing the web, multi-tasking and running various apps that I normally use I have decided that XP will be my OS of choice.  Not only does it “just work” with everything, it is going breathtakingly fast.  My computer boots from being turned off to being fully loaded and running in 12 seconds.  The second I see my desktop I can open a web browser and start using it, and there is no stall on anything on my website (known to juice cpu) in any browser I try.