PC won't boot after removing heatsink

[happy_highlander]

After removing the heatsink and applying new thermal paste and generaly cleaning up inside of tower the pc won't boot up from hdd or optical drive. All fans inside case spin up under all trials, with everything plugged in red hdd light comes on but then goes off after a few seconds, tried removing slave drive connector leaving only master drive connected (both jumpers on cable select) and master drive connected to end of ide cable gives me no lights on the front of the case. Unplugged master drive and connected slave drive (no operating system) to middle of ide cable steady red light on front of case (didn't expect it to boot up ) but light doesn't go out. Set operating system drive jumper to master and connected to middle of ide cable gives me a very dull/faint red light on the front of the case. Tried ubuntu live disk in cd drive with hdd connected and no hdd connected and it won't boot. Pc is about 9 years old running xp. I use it for flashing dm's but was going to dual boot it with linux and run it as plex server just to see how i get on with it before deciding to shell out on decent machine to use as a plex server. Hence the reason for the clean up and new thermal paste. I'm not getting any beep codes from moby (gygabyte I think, can't really remember now). I've removed cmos battery and tried all variations witht the same results the psu has probably only had a few hundred hours of use. Ive re seated all ram and even the removed the processor and reset it to make sure. I know this all seems to be pointing at the psu not having enough juice but it just seems like too much of a coincidence and I don't have another to hand to test it. I've given you as much info as i can rmember and apologise in advance for the long post.
If anybody could shed some light on this it would be much appreciated.

[AirShowNut]

"Ive re seated all ram and even the removed the processor and reset it to make sure"

Are you positive that you put the processor in the socket the right way round ?
Pin one on the processor should correspond to the little nick on the socket.

[busaman]

what do you get in the bios screen normally f2 (are there any setup details).

[happy_highlander]

what do you get in the bios screen normally f2 (are there any setup details).

It doesn't get to bios it won't post

[happy_highlander]

"Ive re seated all ram and even the removed the processor and reset it to make sure"

Are you positive that you put the processor in the socket the right way round ?
Pin one on the processor should correspond to the little nick on the socket.

Positive m8 it wasn't posting before i popped the little spring. Made sure the little black tag part went back on the same side when putting it back in

[AirShowNut]

I would pull ALL power connections, if you have not already done so, and check them for any dirt, dust etc etc.
Sounds silly but what we call "fluff" can kill an electrical connection.
Then only plug in the main board connection and hard drive, power on and see what happens. If the pc boots then shut down and plug optical drive in, repeat with each connection, if the pc does not boot at any stage then I would begin to suspect the power supply.

[happy_highlander]

I'll go over it all again and use a can of air duster on all connections. I suspect it is something to do with power but just seems to much of a coincidence for it to fail when it was working perfectly before i switched it off

[Cod3waX]

take a picture bud
me thinks the psu could have died or u havnt pluged it to the mother board correctly or the gfx power isnt connected if u have separate gfx card

u can try loading the motherboard only to see if it working (remove all hardware apart from cpu/heatsink and try booting)

did u remove the board from the case? u could have put it back incorrect and be shorting the board

[happy_highlander]

No seperate gfx. Plugged and unplugged psu loads of times. I have removed moby but it only seems to go back in one way. If i take moby out and try it will it work or does it need to be in contact with the case for earth purposes. I don't like the way it is sitting on the back plate thingy that has the holes cut out for peripherals (can't remember the proper name atm) to be fair

[Cod3waX]

yea u are probably shorting the connection
is the motherboard in the case on pillars?

take it out the case and try powering it. Put it on something like a bare table

[happy_highlander]

Yes its on little metal pillars at each screw hole. Nothing fell off when i took moby out though

[Cod3waX]

i know its a pain in the bum but taking out the case will eliminate that but first did u try running without anything plugged in only cpu & monitor?

also check oall yer usb socket and com pins to see if any are bent and touching the housing of its casing

[happy_highlander]

Same result of nada with board out the case, even with just processor plugged in I'm getting nothing at monitor just the orange light showing is waiting. Either moby, processor or psu is goosed. I'm reluctant to throw any money at a 9 year old machine though. Must be the scottish blood. No Green light on the front of the case either but can't remember if that only comes on after post. I'll have to see if i can dig out an old psu

[maca]

Buy yourself a new one ya tight wad

[happy_highlander]

Buy yourself a new one ya tight wad

Pmsl I'm looking at an amd fx6300 6core cpu on a gigabyte board with 16gb of ram just for your information gonna load debian on it and use it as a plex server amongst other things. I only wanted to try debian on the old one first to make sure i wasn't useless with it