nothing in the monitor

hi, i had a 2 1/2 year old e machines computer.
one night it just stopped working, power supply comes on and powers the fans full force like the cpu
isnt running.(heat sink fan is spinning).nothing out of the monitor.

so, i figured i would just build a new comp. cuz i have future plans of getting hdtv so on....
so i bought a msi k9ag neo2 mobo. a amd athlon 64x2 4800+. 1 gig ddr2 ram. 400 watt power supply but i am using the old hard drive for windows and buying a sata drive for music, ect....
i put it all together and the same exact thing is happening. i plugged my laptop into the monitor just to make sure and it works just fine.

so, is it possible for a hard drive to fry a mother board? im using a ribbon for a ide hard drive and cdrom. set the hard drive to master and the cdrom to slave. when i plug the power supply into them the both start to spin. but when i plug them into the motherboard they stop working and a red light comes on on the front of the case. nothing out of the monitor.

so could it be the hard drive, did i fry my new mobo, or is there a solution.
thanks

Anything is possible but I don't think the HD fried the mother board.

You didn't mention anything about a video card. Even though the monitor worked with the laptop, I would still try another monitor on the PC. I've seen monitors do strange things and that might be your only problem.

I'd like to suggest you keep your HD and CDROM on seperate IDE channels. There is a performance difference. Also, if your master isn't at the end of the chain you'll have problems.