Weird problem with P5K Premium, won't POST

[Tasiin]

After running flawlessly for over a year, my system is suddenly no longer starting.

What's really strange about this is the way it failed: I first noticed something was wrong when my desktop background had disappeared after I exited from a game. A message popped up in the system tray informing me that that the Windows themes folder had become corrupted and that I needed to run chkdsk.

At this point I was thinking I'd gotten a virus. I restarted the machine and chkdsk began running automatically, but it rebooted itself in the middle of that. I got back into Windows after restarting again, but it could no longer load my user profile and said that it had logged me in with the default profile for the system. I tried creating a new user account and logging into that, but it never got past logging in.

I hit the reset button, and the computer turned off completely instead of restarting and I haven't been able to POST since -- no video, no beep codes. I tried pulling everything unnecessary off the board, swapping video cards, running with one stick of memory, and popping the BIOS battery, but nothing has worked.

What do you think my problem is? When I start it up now, all I get are the case fans spinning, and a few seconds later the video card starts up and the fan runs at full speed endlessly. If the CPU were dead, would I even be seeing the video card start up? I'm really thinking it's the board, though I don't know how it could have died so soon. Should I start an RMA with Asus?

Thanks for reading and any help you can offer!

Full computer specs:
Asus P5K Premium
Core 2 Duo E6850 (was overclocked to 3.5GHz stably)
EVGA 8800 GTS 512MB (also tried an old 7800 GTX, no difference)
SB Audigy (removed during troubleshooting)
36GB WD Raptor and 250GB Caviar (also removed)
2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 (tried running with only one of each stick)
Corsair HX620 PSU

 

[Cybercraig]

Your BIOS chip may have failed. I just got my MB back from ASUS as it was doing the same crap you describe. It is apparent that they replaced the BIOS chip as it is marked diffently than before. Try and reset it but get an RMA going if it still doesn't post with a known good CPU and stick of ram.

 

[Tasiin]

Thanks.

I'm even more convinced that it's the board now, then. I don't have another socket 775 CPU around here to try, though I do have some other sticks of RAM that I could try before sending it back. I doubt that both of my sticks managed to die at the same time, though.

I've already reset it by pulling out the battery (and even left it out overnight), so I guess I'll just get an RMA.

It's pretty unlikely that it'd be the CPU, right? I've never had one fail on me before, and a friend of mine that I spoke to earlier was convinced that I wouldn't even be seeing the video card power up a few seconds after the computer's turned on, and that I'd probably be getting some beep codes if it were dead instead of the motherboard.

(By the way, do you know if Asus will cross ship?)

 

[Cybercraig]

I don't know about cross-shipping. I sent mine back to their Indiana service center.