Yeah, @owens.matthew gets it, that one piece makes the whole story click.

Oh man, this reminds me of a forum post I read a while back. Someone had a similar issue where their PC wouldn't boot, and it turned out to be a slightly loose 24-pin connector. I guess even a tiny gap can mess with the power delivery enough to stop everything from starting up properly. So yeah, checking all those cables first makes a lot of sense, even the ones you wouldn't think matter. It's crazy how something so simple can cause such a headache.

I get what @pat719 means about spam making a site look abandoned. Turning on comment approval stopped the mess for me without eating up writing time.