Theyre all absolutely right man, 100%. Sometimes it takes AWHILE to pin down the exact problem (sometimes its not even possible), and more often than not you will spend a good chunk of time diagnosing a problem. To boot, everyone else is right about a part being working one second and not the other: just the luck of the draw amigo if you get a faulty part, depending on whats wrong with it, its could fail at any given time; work fine for a month then go, or be DOA.
It sounds like a mobo/cpu problem to me. No way the CPU pins could've become bent?
Advice: unplug rig (and press the power button to clear any residual charge. so like take the cord OUT, turn the psu to off, and THEN press the power. the rig should turn on for a split second if theres any charge left), then CLEAR CMOS, and THEN take out battery, leave it like this overnight. If certain things are causing the problem this will help.
If not it sounds like it might be dead from the bios update you did. But that will help at least further narrow it down, absolutely positively. You need to be sure of whats broken, otherwise you'll get a new part and it'll happen again.
Computer building is a LOT of patience man. Like, a lot. My rig died on me earlier this week for the first time in half a decade. And it took me literally 2 days working on it 8 hours a day to get it working again, but get it working again I did. Thats a lot of time and effort i put into this thing, and thats what it takes.
EDIT: Didn't see the OP tried a different video adapter. There you go you've figured out the culprit. Now if theres a why aside from a defective part, I recommend looking into it (eg shorted it out, killed it with tan accidental bios setting, etc).
Edited by kmac20 - 7/22/12 at 9:03am
