I need serious help !!!!

[tony1021]

Ok, here is the short of it. I built my friend a computer last week and tested it with SIS Sandra for 4 hours and it ran great.
Now the nightmare begins:

Original specs: ASUS A7V8X, barton 2500+, kingston 512 pc2700, WD 80gig & ATI 9600 (all new except for mobo.

1st problem: last Sunday when he booted up, he keep having a looping problem once it tried to load windows. I tryed it out and I kept hearing a clickng sound from the mobo so i decided to buy a new mobo:

2. Got a Epox 8rda+ nforce chip mobo, got to the BIOS screen but then it keep rebooting, I then figured it might be the memory so we bought a new pc2700 512 (generic) from compusa.

3. After installing the new memory I was able to start loading Windows XP but I was only able to have it unpartion the drive then when it tried to load Windows (I got as far as the Black screen with the Windows XP icon floating)then it would reboot and loop to the windows icon screen.

Could it be a bad video card or cdrom drive?

Please help, I'm running out of options
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[Mavtech]

What on a motherboard would click other than a fan? I have usually heard that ugly clicking from a bad hard drive or one that is about to go bad. A bad CDROM wouldn't do that I don't think but you can always try by switching it out. This is what you call troubleshooting. Just keep switching stuff out until you find the culprit. It's tedious sometimes. Good luck.

 

[tony1021]

Once I replaced the motherboard, the clicking went away. I first thought that it might be the harddrive but when I looked inside the case (almost cutting my ear off) the sound was not coming from the HDD. Almost like the mobo ship was bad.