| look at the motherboard and its capacitors, do you notice any brown dis-colouration at all on the top of them, from the way it died it sounds like its dieing - dead, check the bios for any voltage readout and see if any voltages start to drop over time. It probibly worth trying to install a 9x os just to see if it will load up that at all. If it doesn't its likely you have a faulty motherboard.
__________________ XP 2500 @ 2400mhz 1.76v Idle -5c, Load 9 c | Abit NF7-s V2.0 @ 218 FSB Adata PC3200 2 x 512meg @ 218 mhz | R9700 Pro @ 415Mhz core, 355Mhz mem
Cooling is custom built TEC / Water/ Freon setup | Vapo Mk1 performance est.  |