No mike, I just pressed on it and the system failed. I have tried all in the manual owbist sent me a link for. All without success. I'm taking it back to where I bought it so they can sort it out. The screen was getting darker and darker and both brightness and contrast were on the max 100 so maybe I have a dud for it not quite 6 months old. Thank to you and owbist for your assistance. Cheers to you both.

Quote "it powered on fine" So it is fair to say you heard the POST beep? I see on that board you have a 24 pin power connector but up in the top rear corner of the motherboard behind the 9 pin DIN and USB hubs there is also a 4 pin power connector. Check this is seated correctly. He seems to be tucked in between the cooling fins and a black item, is it possible you missed it? Not doubting you by any means but at times even the silliest thing can cause frustrations. Is the Corair RAM on the Asus QVL compatibility list? Asus boards need very specific models of RAM to work properly. Beautiful machine, I drooled all down my shirt while writing this.

You may have a driver mismatch to the monitor. Try this: Boot up in the safe mode. That mode loads only the essential software to operate the computer and loads a low resolution, generic monitor driver. Does your monitor oepeate in this mode? If so, you may be on the path to a cure. Change the monitor driver to one that suits your monitor, then reboot. After you get it working again, check to see how the sleep modes are set. Before you change the driver, record the one that is current. You may wish to return to return to it. ************************** A tip for future reference: Before changing monitors, set the driver to the low resolution VGA mode, 640 x 480 pixels. Change monitors and then change to a driver one that matches the replacement monitor. ************************** I see another possible problem and that is your old monitor may not be plug-and-play. The later versions of Windows do plug-n-play while booting. It attempts to interrogate your monitor and if it gets a return of garbage, it may act on it if it isn't smart enough to know this is not a plug-n-play device. I ruined a monitor once when I first installed Windows 95. I had a video card that had the capablity to output a wide range of driving voltages to the monitor's sweep circuits. However, it was not a plug-n-play device. Windows set the card to the wrong voltages and overdrove the sweep circuits. The monitor lasted about 5 minutes. Lets us know how it turns out. If the monitor does not operate in the "safe mode", there is something more wrong - could be the monitor, or could be the video hardware /circuits.

Thanks for your suggestion, Joe, but when I go to step 3 to right-click on Windows Internet Explorer, it's not there on the list. I've searched the web about this and others have had the same problem. I have searched my computer and can't find it anywhere. It's like they (Microsoft) have found a secret hidey-hole to store it in. Even my son looked around and couldn't find it. (He's a lot more computer savvy than I am.) Believe me I have spent mega time on this. I went to the Microsoft website and tried the fix-it link and nothing happened, either.