Overheat during POST

[21stHermit]

I have this ECS MB with a Celeron D 360 CPU, using the stock HSF from my E2180. During POST I get a system message: "System Overheat" and shortly thereafter it shuts down.

I pulled off the HSF and the thermal compound seemed well dispersed. So I'm wondering if this is not a phantom message with another cause? I would think you could run a CPU w/o a HSF for sometime w/o overheating, but I have no reference.

Six-months ago I ran this MB and CPU but a different HSF with no POST problems, overall it ran fine.

Anyone seen these symptoms and/or have suggestions?

 

[21stHermit]

It's possible this is a memory issue. That ECS MB supports DDR & DDR2. I started with 2 x 1GB sticks of DDR. I've now switched to one 512MB stick of DDR2. So far the system overheat message has not reappeared. I'm now stopped at hal.dll missing, which is apparently a boot.ini error.

If this memory configuration rings any bell, please reply.