As Tony said, YES it matters. The case front-panel power switch is REQUIRED to get it working.

Cheers

But it doesn't actually have to be a *switch*. Simply briefly short the appropriate pins on the motherboard with something suitable. I use fine-pointed steel tweezers.

it seems that when i hook up the switch...it really has no effect...it (the heatsink fan) keeps turning on and running for a little while..stops then the fan starts again...i tried hooking up the monitor cable again, but there is no output....

Is there any beeping? Most motherboards (maybe it is the BIOS?) have a series of error codes they make known through a series of beeps when the video output isn't available. I honestly don't remember if it is through an onboard speaker or if it needs to be hooked up to the case speaker, though.

it does have an on-board speaker....it used to beep a few times...but hasn't in quite awhile....

I'd be more concerned just now about the sparks you saw

i am actually.....has anyone seen anything like that before?

Only once.

Peter

I'm assuming no, but is there some easy way to find out if the CPU is still working?

Unplug everything except the CPU, CPU-fan, soft-power switch, and speaker. Remove all expansion cards, keyboards, mice, drives and even the RAM.

Power it on and see if it beeps. Unplug it afterwards.

I already did that and there is no beeping...

The fan currently turns on for a little while at first, then shuts off...but now starts up again...then shuts off and keeps doing this until I unplug it. there is no video output while this is going on...what might that mean?

I fear that it means that you've toasted something. Did you try stripping back to basics and listening out for beeps?

i did... and there were no beeps....i thought about contacting Intel to see if they would replace it...but i can't find a direct email...however, i would think there would be a way to at least get my old motherboard/cpu to work, but to no avail.

Normally when you see sparks coming from things, that's not a good sign... Do you have another fan you could connect up instead of the CPU fan, just to rule out a fan problem?

Stig

ok..through an Intel program at work, I bought a new motherboard and CPU. I put it together before putting in the case, and it seemed to work. When I put it in the case, then it wouldn't work. So I figured it was a short. So i unscrewed the screws and then just tried a few at a time. Then...a little puff of smoke near where the battery is.....argh!! then i take out the screws...then it seems to work (although i haven't tried hooking up the hard drives or video card yet. then i tried screwing in the screws again.....smoke and i can see the one of the circuit board 'lines' getting very red and then the fan stopped. What might be causing this short? it seems that where the connections are in the back, that part of the motherboard has to be slightly elevated where the opposite doesn't. might it be the type of screws that I am using that is causing this short?

Check that you don't have an extra standoff post under the motherboard that doesn't correspond to a mounting point.

At this point your motherboard is hosed.

Of curiosity, What program was it, you spoke of?

The program is Intel Retail's Edge program. You have to work at a eligible electronics dealer to be involved, however. My motherboard should have been hosed for all practical purposes, but it wasn't. I actually got it to work. However, the reason why it didn't work was for something really, really dumb of me. For the first time (in a very, very long time) I had a new computer case. And i didn't put the little spacers beneath the motherboard. I know, i know that was very stupid. The first time I built a computer awhile back my roommate did most of the work since I didn't have a clue what I was doing...(and obviously haven't gotten much better.)

Speaking of dumb things, I did another one. I have been trying to use one of the partitions of my hard drive to try to run OS X on it (via hackint0sh) and in the process of trying to get that to work, in the BIOS i changed one of the settings to disable the USB ports (stupid, i know.) so now I cannot change it because the keyboard no longer works, there is no PS/2 connector on the motherboard, and i tried to reset bios via the jumper and the CMOS battery but to no avail. Any suggestions? what i will probably have to do is re-flash the bios when I get my new dvd burner, but i thought there might be another way that I'm not thinking of....

The cmos reset thing has to work maybe it's a different jumper or something else to reset it. What is the motherboard model ?

Now make sure there aren't any spacers that don't have a screw going into them. Like one under a spot on the motherboard without a hole.

The motherboard model is (intel) dp45sg

I looked thru the manual. There doesn't seem to be a way reset the bios, short of pulling the jumper and reflashing it from a special boot cd.

I assume that where they mention Configure mode on page 54 which automatically enters the menu is what is needed. I'd be surprised if somebody made a motherboard that can't be reset to factory defaults.

You shorted out the motherboard against the tray and it still worked afterwards? o.O

I wouldn't trust that motherboard to be reliable in the long term especially since yo usaid there was a puff of smoke and some PCB lines went bright red...

Yeah, I saw that, but this board doesn't seem to allow changing the bios except with a kbd or by reflashing from a boot device.

I agree, It dosen't seem sane that a bios can be set to disable the only on-board means of changing bios configs.

Have you tried fiddling with the jumper described on page 54 of the manual?

Most motherboards won't reset the BIOS settings even if you do reflash it.

well..i think it is toast now....i accidently bumped the dvd burner's eject button while flashing the bios for the billionth time and now it does nothing....it will shut off right away and turn back on....

There should be someway to recover from a bad bios update otherwise you should be able to order a new chip and replace it.