i recently built a pc and bought all the parts which were pretty expensive and broke my bank for the time being, i built my pc and got everything working properly including drivers installed etc+.
The other day i bought xp pro and got to the piont where i was installing it, then setup had fished the first part of formatting my 320GB drive, and after all that was done it required me to restart my pc. It restrarted and just after thr bios beep i pressed the power button because i was going to be late for work, and switched my pc off and left it.
When i got back about 6 hours later i booted up my pc and it powered on fine, but the monitor just stayed in standby and there was no bios beep. Please note my pc case is brand new and all the parts are shiny and new and have no dust.
i have tried the following-
-checked all conections
-tested RAM
-tested graphics card
-tried different monitors
-tested psu
i have a seriously bad feeling it is the motherboard which is the worst possible part that could possibly fail, thing is though how could it die without me doing anything to it????????????????????
i bought the motherboard about 3 months ago and the gaurentee has run out.

any help or advice most appriciated

If a motherboard is going to fail, it will fail most often right out of the box, or a few weeks out. You have tested everything else. Have you tried using the on-board video?

i have tried the onboard video, i was thinking about testing the cpu but something tells me it is the motherboard at fault. Can switching the pc off during startup damage the motherboard though?

"Can switching the pc off during startup damage the motherboard though?"...

Not really, but it can corrupt a hard drive

i have tried a different hard drive also so it looks like my motherboard is f*****.
i have an amd athlon 64 3200+ cpu socket 939, so i could look at buting a new motherboard for that with DDR2, i have looked in various shops and seen 940 pin motherboards, would a 940pin motherboard work with my cpu???