CPU fan died mid-game, computer shutdown, now won't boot (w/ new fan)

[darbold]

Hello, I was hoping to get some help with a (hopefully) small problem I am having.

Summary: So I was playing a game on my desktop and the computer shut down, saying CPU fan had died. I opened it up and sure enough, it wasn't working. I have now purchased a new fan and installed it (it works), but the computer freezes at "Starting Windows".

There are more details involved though, as I was trying to troubleshoot my situation.

When the CPU fan died, I turned off the CPU fan warning and tried to boot the computer, just to make sure it would work. It wanted to run the system repair, which I let it start but then was satisfied that the CPU likely wasn't blown, so I shut it off without letting it load up fully. Some things I have read suggest that this can ruin the boot sector of the hard drive. So I have installed a new, blank HD (it was originally a storage drive, so it is currently formatted), and tried to reinstall the OS from the OEM disk (the one used to originally install the OS - so I know it works). It stalls each time at "Starting Windows" during the install.

The thing that confuses me is that nothing in the system has significantly changed from a perfectly working system.

The system is:

Motherboard - ASUS M4N68T-M
CPU - Athlon X2 250
Power Supply - RAIDMAX RX-500AF
Memory - CORSAIR CMV4GX3M2A1333C9
Hard Drive - Seagate 1TB (both harddrives I have tried are the same)

 

[pacioli]

If you have no CPU cooling you should not run the computer.
You could have blown capacitors on the motherboard when it overheated. Although the newegg picture looks like your board has all solid caps. There are other things that can overheat too. Check around the mobo for darkened spots.
AMD CPUs get very hot very fast without cooling... Check Youtube for videos of AMD CPUS getting burned up with no coolers...

 

[killerhurtalot]

It sounds like you blew your cpu when you started it up again...

 

[darbold]

If you have no CPU cooling you should not run the computer.
You could have blown capacitors on the motherboard when it overheated. Although the newegg picture looks like your board has all solid caps. There are other things that can overheat too. Check around the mobo for darkened spots.
AMD CPUs get very hot very fast without cooling... Check Youtube for videos of AMD CPUS getting burned up with no coolers...

It was for 30 seconds, so definitely not very long. One website suggested it, but I guess it was a bad suggestion.

Is there any way to tell what the problem is? The BIOS loads just fine, and I downloaded and ran a Seagate DOS utility for checking for problems with the hard drive. I am surprised that would be possible if the motherboard or processor were bad.

 

[pacioli]

It was for 30 seconds, so definitely not very long. One website suggested it, but I guess it was a bad suggestion.

Is there any way to tell what the problem is? The BIOS loads just fine, and I downloaded and ran a Seagate DOS utility for checking for problems with the hard drive. I am surprised that would be possible if the motherboard or processor were bad.

CPUs are very complex. You can damage a portion of it without killing it completely. In the bios does it still show up as having two cores?

 

[darbold]

Yes, it still shows up as having 2 cores.

At this point, I am willing/able to put down a fair bit of money to buy new stuff. But I can't afford everything new. A new CPU/Motherboard would be okay, but I don't want to do that only to find out it is RAM/PS/Videocard.

Ideally, I wish there was a better way to find out which part had the problem. No insights that I am missing? I am great (relative to my friends, no comparison to the experts here) at fixing problems when the computer is running, but bad at hardware stuff.