Hey everyone, Im new here, and hoping I can find some help and answers to my questions. Im not new to troubleshooting or any general computer topic, though.

Ok so here goes..
A few weeks ago I went away for the weekend and left my pc on, like I usually do. Well apparently my house got hit by lightning (I live in Florida..) and it fried my wireless router, cable modem, 3 phones, my tv, house alarm system, intercom system, answering machine, and some things in my main computer.
When I got home, my pc was off, which is pretty odd because even if there was a surge, usually it would have just turned back on. So I hit the power button and my lights turn on for a second and then it just turns off. I open it up and try to figure out whats wrong and figure my power supply is fried, so I switch it out. With the power plugged into my video card (geforce fx5900xt) it does the same thing, but when I unplug the 4pin molex from the video card, the computer starts up. My motherboard had no onboard video so I couldnt tell what was going on you know. I tried my harddrive in another pc, and everything on that is fine. Everything else seemed to be ok so I figured either my agp slot or my video card got destroyed. The mobo was under warrenty with free parts+labor so I sent it in for an RMA, (Albatron is the company, and they didnt even send me a new one they "fixed it" for 4 weeks and sent it back..still not working). And I bought a new video card (msi geforce 6600gt) and a new 450watt power supply. So after I got my unfixed mobo back, I went back to newegg and bought a new one, now from Gigabyte. Anyways long story short, I get everything together and it does the same thing! Turns on for a second and stops. So I unplug the power from this video card and it worked, the pc posts. So I go into the bios and set my clock multiplier since it had my 2ghz processor(Althon64 3000+) clocked at 200mhz, saved and exited. As it starts to get to the winxp screen, it just goes black and goes back to the post screen. Then it says it was unable to start up correctly and if I want to start in safe mode, normal mode bla bla. I tried all the options and the same thing happens, it goes back to the post screen and starts all over.
Now the only things I havent replaced are the processor and my 2 sticks of 512mb pc3200 ram..well and the harddrive but that works fine.

So any ideas on what the problem could be? Think it could be the processor or the ram, because it really sucks having to pay to replace all these things, I am in college and working to pay for my apartment and car and well everything pretty much by myself and I just spent 400 bucks replacing things that didnt fix my problem hah.

Any help would be appreciated. Im sorry for the long post and if there are any run on sentences, typos, or grammatical errors, its been a long day.
Thanks in advance.
Jim

it culd be ur processor maybe the lightning affected it
and have u tried ur windows xp reboot disc

Any power strike that wiped out that much stuff in a house could have done amazing damage to a PC--once again a good case is made for having a UPS like a Belkin or APC that offers $75000 or more in replacement value if anything gets fried. That's a good investment that's really cheap.

You've replaced so much, there's not much left. That kind of surge definitely could have fried the CPU and RAM, maybe even toasting things like front panel case wires (power), or damaging them enough to cause shorts--though damage like that should have manifested itself in other ways like instant on or never on. I assume the new PSU included new cables and you didn't reuse old ones (e.g., modular snap-on type cables)?

Does the new Gigabyte mobo have onboard video? If so, I would try removing the mobo from the case, placing it on a non-conductive surface and attempting to boot. Try bringing it up with just one stick of RAM, using the onboard video. If there are problems, remove that stick and insert the other. If there are still problems can you temporarily get your hands on a known good stick of RAM? If so, try that.

If there are still problems, the CPU might be toast.

I would take pop pop's suggestion and strip the system back to a barebones scenario...disconnect everything so the variables are as few as possible. My hunch is that the CPU is not at issue. I don't think you would have made it as far as you did in the boot process with a toasted CPU.

So, motherboard, RAM, video, heatsink/fan, and keyboard on a non-conductive surface.

See if you can make it through POST...

So the only original parts are the cpu and memory and your hdd. Therefore, barring other unforseen problems, the issue must be one of those three components. Have you tried one memory module at a time? That would be the step I would take if I was in your shoes. I also wonder about your hdd. You said it worked okay in another system. What does that mean exactly? Did you install it as a secondary hdd and simply access it? Or were you actually able to boot from it? The latter would seem implausible, as you usually cannot simply place a hdd in a different system and boot from it. In any case, I wouldn't necessarily assume that the hdd is "okay". It may be accessible, but not bootable, and it's during windows boot when you're now having problems.

To follow up Whyzman, and as a general problem-solving strategy, I would take out everything except your cpu and hsf and psu, turn on your system and see if you get a single repeating beep (the specific beep code may be different for your mobo; this is for an award bios). If so, your cpu likely is good. Then insert your memory and turn it on and see if you get a single pattern (I think) of a long and short beep. If so, your memory likely is good. Then install your video card and see if you can get into the bios. If so, you're on your way. If you cannot do any of those steps, the likely culprit is whatever component failed in that sequence: cpu, memory, and video card. Good luck.

marty