[XPS 630i fails to start]

I submitted this thread in the wrong area, sorry everyone (Vista installed)

Im helping out a friend on his gaming tower, I consider myself pretty good in troubleshooting problems with machines but this one is backing me in a corner. At 1st, he was experiencing POST messages upon boot up, I took the box home, hooked up all the peripherals, the minute I plugged in the cable to the back, the tower turned on, (pretty loud box too) all the pretty lights on the front etc. but the peripherals has no power, no keyboard power, no mouse power, monitor delves into sleep mode. I was planning on doing a clean install with Win7. It has 4gig ram, Core 2 quad for those familiar with the 630i, At this point, not sure what else to do. Anyone have any ideas on the next step? Everything appears to be plugged in correctly, ram seated, the huge Video card is seated and power to that as well. What am I missing?? appreciate the feedback

 

Not quite sure either, however, your problem sounds as if it associated with the Mother Board. It is rather easy for a system that produces a lot of heat and has lots of bells and whistles to produce a small electrical surge when plugging periphials, especially if the unit is powered on when installing those devices multiple times over the course of time. If you examine the mother board closely, look for burn marks or blacks around some of the plug in areas on the mother board, particularily around the power supply area, the CPU area as well as the video and sound cards. Again, not for sure, but it does sound as if your motherboard is the issue.