damned machine

[jimkonow]

well, it wont boot. when i discovered the CPU was running at 80 C, i decided i needed thermal cooling compound. i put it on the processor, its all installed correctly, and now the machine wont boot past where it shows me what SATA devices are connected. help.

 

[PC eye]

You cooked the cpu there! I ran into that on a Socket A Asus A7N8X Deluxe when the 3rd party cpu cooler suddenly quite and saw at first 74C then 85C max. By the time I replaced the then installed stock hsf with a lesser model Zalman model it was already too late. The fsb was lowered from the 200mhz setting for the XP3200+ default down to the 166mhz x 2 setting. If I run it now it will show up in the bios as an XP2500+. Try your fsb at 133mhz there.

 

[Lax]

You cooked the cpu there!

Depends on the CPU, old athlons can run without a fan for quite sometime while new P4's will pop if you let them sit on for a few minutes.

when i discovered the CPU was running at 80 C, i decided i needed thermal cooling compound.

80C is indeed on the high end of a CPU, quite close to the max on most, but out of curiosity what CPU were you running, if it was a P4 Prescott I'd say that was high, but still possible to work.

and now the machine wont boot past where it shows me what SATA devices are connected.

Could be a drive problem, not the CPU. Have you tried booting it without connecting any of the HDD's/CD-ROM drives? Best bet would be to reset the BIOS as well (pull the battery for about a minute and stick it back in) and then try booting the machine.