Hi,

Here's the problem. I was in the process of troubleshooting my internal modem by de-installing and reinstalling it. I had the tower on its side at the time as I didn't want to have to mess around with the screws again if it still didn't work.

Landlady's kid suddenly zooms in, knocks everything around and in the process, one of the tower's screws dropped into it. I'm not sure if it hit the motherboard or anything, but the system was powered up at the time, and it suddenly turned off. I highly suspect EDS, but I'm shooting in the dark here.

The screw has been retrieved, but my computer won't even POST now. The tower lights come on briefly for maybe half a second, then poof, gone. I've tried replacing the ATX power switch with a spare one I had, same problem. Could it be the motherboard? I simply dunno where to start at this point. I'm a n00b software engineer. I've had some experience with assembling my own hardware and stuff, but this is the first time I've ever had to troubleshoot any of my hardware and I simply dunno where to start. Does anyone have any feedback? Thanks in advance.

Hey I would first try this unplug the computer from the electrical socket for a few min. Then plug the system back an give it a shot. If that dosent' work try pullin the card that is close to where the screw fell.

Just plug out everything and plug in again ... see if you can start your computer now ..