Whats that smell? ITS MY MOBO!!!! HELP!!

[Master Chief]

I came into work this morning to the retched smell of a burned mobo. See pics below.

This computer has been running great for 8 months. No problems what so ever. Does anyone know why it would fry like this? And the location of where it fried is particular interesting. There was a usb connector there and it was hooked up to the usb wires, however there wasnt anything connected to the usb port. The computer was in standby mode as my boss puts it in standby every nite when we leave. It had 2 hard drives hooked up to it, a 20gb master and a 10gb slave.

I bought a new mobo a MDS or something like that. I hooked up everyhting like normal and it seems ok but it shuts down by itself. It goes through the post when it seems like when it hits Windows XPPro it shuts down. I tried to do a repair on it and it was repaing the data.cab file and it shut down on its own. Now when I try to go into that drive it says windows is no longer on the c drive. Is there a way I can get the data back? I put the second drive in and set it to master and the same thing happened although it had windows 98 on it. I need to get the data back.Do you think the HDD's are toast?

WinXP pro on the master and Win98 on slave
256mb
nvidia gforce3
Athlon xp1400

www.clanimo.com/epox1.gif
www.clanimo.com/epox2.gif
www.clanimo.com/epox3.gif

[sm8000]

The drives may be alright, although you really need to reinstall Windows when you change motherboards. If you boot from the CD and do an 'upgrade' installation (don't clean install which can format the drives!) you should be able to make it to the desktop okay, with all data intact to the extent the drives are okay.

[Master Chief]

The computer wont stay on long enough. Its shutting down when it detects the 20gb drive. Windows says theres no partition now.

[Sweeper]

Wow, some crazy spot to catch fire or get that hot.
Would have never guessed that spot would get hot....

[nukes]

Check the PSU. Also try a different CPU or RAM stick.

[Master Chief]

I was thinking it could be the CPU somehow fluctuating power or something so it randomly turns off the computer or causing it to turn off. I dont think its the ram cuz as far as I know if the ram wasnt good I wouldnt even get to the post screen.

[sm8000]

To get your data you'll have to slave your drives in another computer and copy the data over. You may need to use recovery software if the partitions are truly gone. Once you've got the data, zap the drive (or use the zero-fill utility from the manufacturer's site). Check that your pins are not bent (both ends) and jumpering okay (keep in mind your cables may be faulty now too) and begin reformatting and reinstalling. If it doesn't take Windows then you probably need new drives. Can't hurt to test the RAM with www.memtest86.com and maybe test that power supply with meters - or just get a new one to be safe.