I built a system a couple of months ago with an MSI 865PE Neo2-FIS2R
motherboard and an Antec TrueBlue 480W PSU.

The system would turn on, but it would never boot up at all. The Neo2's
four diagnostic LED lights all hung on solid red, indicating that the
processor was damaged. However, the processor (a P4 2.8GHz CPU) was not
damaged. I eventually went to CompUSA and bought one of their store-brand
300W PSUs, installed it in place of the Antec PSU, and sure enough the
system then booted up and worked like a charm. (I didn't have many
components installed anyway, so a 300W PSU was sufficient anyway.)

I presumed the Antec's PSU power cable was bad, and got a refund on the
unit. (I had purchased by mail order from a retailer in another part of the
country.)

Since then, I hadn't had any problems with the system. Except that on three
or four occasions, when I turned on the PC, it would power on but not boot
up. I simply turned it off and back on again, and the next time it booted
up properly. I wasn't too worried about this since I intended to eventually
upgrade the PSU.

Then, last Wednesday, I attempted to install SP2 for Windows XP. (WinXP is
the only OS installed on the system). The installation of SP2 seemed
successful, except that when I rebooted, WinXP stayed stuck on the bootup
screen with the Windows logo and black background. Only one block of the
progress bar would appear at the bottom, and it would stay stuck on that one
block without any sign of activity. Doing a hard shutdown and booting back
up again got the same result. So I let Windows stay on that screen
overnight, thinking maybe it needed a long time to boot up the first time
after installing SP2. The next morning, it was still stuck on that same
screen with only one block of the progress bar, so I did another hard
shutdown.

I had a .GHO file of WinXP on a storage partition, and I decided it was
time to restore the ghost image of XP (pre-SP2 install attempt). However,
when I booted into the Ghost 2003 diskette, it would always get stuck while
loading the GUI, just as WinXP always got stuck while loading. I shut down
the PC and started it back up again and retried loading Ghost a few times,
but it kept freezing while loading the GUI.

Even though WinXP and Ghost always froze while loading, I could boot into
the Neo2's BIOS and never have any problems with it. All the BIOS's setting
(including the power levels) were normal.

Then it got to the point that holding down the PC's power button would not
force a hard shutdown, so I had to remove the power cord from the back of
the PC to do this. And as soon as I plugged the power cord back in, the PC
started up on its own automatically without me hitting the button. I
unplugged everything from the system a let it set and "cool down" overnight,
but when I plugged in the power cord the next morning, the exact same thing
happened again.

Since the generic 300W PSU was apparently not working properly, I went back
to CompUSA today and bought another Antec TrueBlue 480W PSU, since I needed
a new PSU and this was the one that I had wanted in the first place.
However, after I installed the Antec PSU and powered on the system, the
exact same thing happened that had happened with the other one befo the
PC would power on, but the system never booted up at all. Just like before,
the Neo2's four diagnostic LED lights all hung on solid red. I did a Google
search but found no issues with the the Antec TrueBlue and the MSI 865PE
Neo2. (And keep in mind that the other Antec TrueBlue was bought in another
part of the country, so it's doubtful that the two would be from a same "bad
batch".)

I found that if I reconnected the generic CompUSA-brand 300W PSU back to the
motherboard, it would boot up, but the OS would still always get stuck.
Then I set the Antec PSU's switch from 115 to 230, connected it to the Neo2,
turned it on ... and everything was dead. When that happened, I unplugged
the Antec immediately. I don't think I had it powered on at 230 for more
than five seconds, but now when I try to power on the Neo2, even with
the generic CompUSA PSU reconnected back to it, it stays dead. So I guess I
fried it. (I thought the 115/230 selector was for the input power only and
wouldn't have any affect on the PSU's output to the mobo.)

So why will my Neo2 mobo not boot up with a PSU as reputable as the Antec
TrueBlue 480W? (I've verified that my Antec PSU works fine on other
systems.) Can a bad power supply (the generic 300w PSU) cause an OS to
freeze up during boot, but cause no other apparent problems? Is there a
certain amount of time I can wait to see if the motherboard will boot up
again? Or is it fried for sure?

I've been having all kinds of crazy stuff going on since the start, and this
experience has been hellish to say the least. I'm just trying to get a
handle on what's going on. TIA