Here's the deal, my right-hand man at work, Scott, has a D530, runs it with the onboard vid, good enough for what he does, Vampire Wars on facebook.
 
The system started crashing, he figured it was spyware/virus/all the junk he downloads.
 
I have his tower at my place.
 
Won't boot past the mem check, gets to about 300mb the first time, shuts down. 120 or so next boot, shuts down. Any boot after that does not get past 60mb. I figure PSU.
 
Pull the HP 250W PSU, slap in my 600W(currently powering my system, yes it works fine), same deal. I figure maybe it's RAM. 3 sticks, pull them, go one at a time in slot 1, same thing. Tried all 4 slots, all 3 sticks one at a time, same thing.
 
Pull the HDD, slap in mine, same thing.
 
Disconnect everything but my monitor and HDD, no mouse/KB/DVD drives, nothing, same thing.
 
Between boots, or attempts at them, I have to physically unplug the power cord from the PSU(no switch on the HP unit), or hit the switch on my PSU.
 
The fan on the CPU heatsink spins up like 90, but out of curiousity, I put my hand on the shroud, some shiney chrome type thing over the entire heatsink, and it feels pretty warm. In my opinion it seems pretty damn warm, for a system that can't get past the mem check, like maybe 20 seconds the first boot attempt, MAYBE 8 seconds after that.
 
So, help me out if you can, figure maybe the HS needs a fresh shot of TIM(I have lots), or the CPU is toast.
 
Tell me I'm missing something really simple, and I'll be a very happy camper.
 
Thanks my friends.

Thanks RJ, he got the PC free, his mom works for a large company and her IT guy passes the best of the worst on to her when they upgrade.

Dunno what they use for the original TIM, but the whole HS assembly is loose on the cpu, as in I can move it VERY easily. Hopefully it's a heat/TIM issue, he isn't rich, he's a window installer like me, and winter isn't exactly our "busy" time of the year.

Had two systems with the same symptoms, both PSU related, but that's not the case here. Damn I hope it isn't the mobo.

BTW, I have to say, Scott is cool, doesn't bug me at all about when it will be fixed, or what it will cost. He's not the atypical friend/family member that figures you should be able to do everything, for free, RIGHT NOW!

Tis the only reason I'm doing this for him, he's a good friend and co-worker, which is a nice change of pace from the usual "computer illiterate customer" that expects everything fixed yesterday, for $5 and a sixpack.

Remember, I'm in Ontario Canada, not the US...

Intel P4 3ghz, gimme a sec, I'll get some pics...

Okay, so lemme get a few more pics in, been a long time since I posted pics in here, things have changed.

Full shot of the socket, no, the caps aren't leaking or exploding, that's just how they look, strangely enough.
 

No point scoring an aftermarket cooler, he doesn't OC at all, go figure, Vampire Wars on facebook whilst listening to tunes, that's about the toughest workout his system gets, no "Ninja" required. 

Found the brackets on ebay for $5, thousands of them, seems there is a prob with these brackets, wow, lemme state that I am very surprised by this. Yeah, right. 

Gonna try local tomorrow or Monday, hate to wait a week for a 10 cent piece of plastic that he'll end up paying $12 for. HP should be handing these out for free.