After Thermal Shutdown, system refuses to boot

I am in a total mess. I was using my computer to play Portal, I paused it for a while so that I could read an important mail and everything worked perfect. I returned back to the game and played for a while to see my computer shut down and showing a thermal heating warning. This is normal right? I hope so! But what happened next was not at all normal. I happened to switch the PC on again and realized the PC is not booting only. Now this has literally scared the shit out of me and I am clueless as to what to do! I am no tech-savvy, I need proper expert advice, expecting one!

Thermal heating is normal but not always. Sometimes it is sign that your PC is on the verge of a break down and it’s high time you take proper care of it or else you might actually land up into messes you cannot even think of! I would first like to ask you to do the following for us to help you in the best possible manner. All I want you to do is list down all possible things you know about the system i.e. it specifications. I am not trying to test your computer knowledge but it is important for me or rather all other fellow-posters to know the specifications so that we can try and find out where the problem actually exists and what can be done to sort it out in the best possible manner. When I am asking you about specification, please note that I am expecting details like your fan, your motherboard, your hard disk etc and also the extra installed things which might possibly be a video card and all. I don’t need the configurations but it’s existence needs to be reported. Please do that ASAP so that we can start over with the troubleshooting process.

Yes I totally do understand that you don’t mean to under estimate or de-dignify my basic computer knowledge but trust me even to find the specifications that you asked for I had hard time. Rubbing the sweat over my forehead now! :p . Also, I totally appreciate your prompt attempt of helping me out of this. I never knew thermal heating would cause such severe problem. This used to happen with the previous system that I was using and it has also happened with the current one but I always felt it is totally fine and I don’t really need to care about it. In fact, the first time it happened to my old system, i was a bit worried ad happened to do some research and open a thread on it and i was confidently advised to ignore that. Am I misguided? If i would have taken this thermal overheating seriously, it would have saved my system from a complete breakdown right?

Anyways, my specifications are as what follows: i use a Shuttle SP35P2 (V2), which has a nVidia 9800GT video card apart from a 8GB DDR2 RAM, and an Intel Core 2 Quad. Is that enough?

Yes! That would be enough and you’ve shed enough sweat until now! The information looks perfect as of now. I think you are misled in that concern and I feel you could have easily avoided the entire overheating episode. Henceforth please rely only on reliable sources of information. I can definitely show you authenticated proof of whatever I say, I never speak in assumptions, I always have a set of evidence ready, that is how every forum poster should be. And speaking about your problem, could you try the following changes on your system? I definitely feel that will help.

- Remove the case of the system using a screw driver and make sure you remove the side from where you can see the entire system
- Look for dust in the system and if you happen to spot any, use either a low power vacuum cleaner or a duster and dust it off.
- Remove the CMOS battery and fix it after which remove the video card and reinstall it after wiping it properly
- Rescrew your system properly. Make sure, everything you have removed has been re-assembled as it was earlier and the system looks clean enough

The major reason why this happens is sometimes that the system is not correctly designed and installed. I call it design flaw and it is very bad on the manufacturer’s part. Sometimes, the fan is mounted in a very wrong way. The fan might be mounted in a reverse way which might pull in air instead of throwing it out. This becomes a reason for dust build up under the vet. One non-technical solution would be that you have to clean the computer frequently. As frequently as once every month, still you might end up having troubles. Also, it becomes a bit frustrating to do this.

Another option would be deactivate the fan once and for all. You can probably remove the cord connected to the fan and discontinue the power supply. This might solve your problem but even that is temporary and is not an ideal way to deal with the issue and that is definitely not how your system should be functioning. If you are technically sound enough and can understand how to actually reverse the fan by unmounting and remounting backwards, your system should simply work nothing less than perfect.

I have totally understood what i have to do and I appreciate this commendable effort by you to actually sit and spare time from your schedule to solve an issue that I am facing. I do not expect you to understand the fact that i can be called one of the comp-dumbest people you have ever come across. On account of which I cannot do anything of the above both of you all mentioned except for opening the case. I am too scared to use the vacuum cleaner as i think i might actually mess up things by maybe pulling some wire into it and then not able to fix anything after that. So, for now i have decided to call my local hardware engineer who can perform all the tasks that you have mentioned. That should be enough right? And that would be more reliable of an option I guess.