Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in loving memory of my dear departed PC. It has died on me!!!! AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! Ok here's what I did. I got a bit frightened of viruses and stuff and went a wee bit crazy. Got Firewall (Zone Alarm) - Fine and Dandy. Got Anti Virus (AVG) - Fine and Dandy. Got Spyware Remover (Spybot) - Fine and Dandy. Now wait for it....... Got Registry Cleaner - PC died. Well truth be told I can only blame myself really. On running the scan reg thingy it detects obselete files which you can delete. This I did and everything seemed ok. I decided to run it again and noticed files for ICQ, AIM and a few other programs which I have previously uninstalled. Of course me being the idiot that I am went and deleted everything which didn't seem necessary. That was my big mistake. On restart my PC kept saying "Windows Protection Error - System Halted....." Then restarted in safe mode but trying everything I knew I could not repair the files as I did not have a copy of the original installion disk. I did not wish to format my drive and lose all my information so I thought I would install another drive and new operating system. This went without any hitches until it said "To finish installing windows you need to restart your computer". I clicked yes..... then it froze. I waited but still nothing. Well lo and behold I decide to click my restart button on the PC - Big mistake. This is what killed my pc. I heard the fans whirring, power lights came on, but nothing. Absolutely nothing. My PC was officially dead. Nothing appeared on my monitor, no CMOS, no IDE detection, no memort test, nothing. I guess my motherboard must be at fault (, phew - at least I don't get the blame then). I also have an old motherboard which does the same thing. Power is being supplied to all the parts but nothing happens. No Bios beeps, no HDD light, no other stuff. Does anyone have any suggestions how to check which bit of the motherboard is faulty incase it's easy to change? I might just bring it to some PC repair shop in the vain hope they can revive it. Well that is basically my troubles. I suppose I ought to add a moral to this story, hmmmm let me think...... Ok well it's always a good idea to have safety precautions but sometimes you can be too safe, does that make sense? Well it's the best I can do for now. See you all in quiz