Attack of the Undead Computer

Last week, I was playing "Jedi Knight", and when I got to the level where I had to fight Maw (the floating guy with no legs), it played through the cutscene and my computer just died.

I could turn it on, but nothing happened (the drive lights lit up briefly, then turned off, and the computer simply did nothing). Keyboard lights didn't change when I hit Num/Caps/Scroll lock.

Tried pulling out all of the cards, reseating the memory and CPU, letting it sit overnight while unplugged -- nothing worked. There's a set of diagnostic LEDs on the motherboard, but they weren't helpful; sometimes they froze on the memory check, but other times they froze on the processor initialization, the RTC check, or the BIOS initialization.

Some of the machines at work had the same CPU and motherboard, so I brought mine in to try swapping out parts until I found the culprit. But when I simply plugged it in, it booted. Brought it home, and it continued to work.

Well, Friday night, I decided to try playing Jedi again. Got to the same level, got through the cutscene, and...

BLEARGH. This time, Jedi Knight terminated, Windoze started repainting the desktop, and it just locked up. CTRL-ALT-DEL didn't work. Tried resetting... and it wouldn't boot. Just like last time. Spent all weekend trying to get it to work, with no luck.

Brought it in to work again today, but haven't had a chance to start swapping parts (have to do that at lunchtime). However, it didn't start up when I plugged it in and turned it on, like I was hoping it would do.

Anyone ever encounter anything like this before? I'm running an 800MHz Duron on a Microstar K7T Pro2A motherboard.

The motherboard itself might be faulty... that's all I can suggest. Perhaps there's a broken contact between one of the simms, or the CPU slot, and the motherboard. If that were teh case, carrying it to your work might have knocked it back in to place, and it might be pushed out of place by ehat expansion.

I'd check the power supply. You'd be suprised as to what those can do to a machine.

God it sounds like the dark side is really after ya!

You must show great promise as a Jedi Knight. Either that or your being prepared for a black helmet mask.