Please help have I fried the cpu?

[oops]

Hi all I'm in a little bit of a pickle a friend asked me to have a look at his PC as it wasn't starting very well, it was booting as far as the windows front screen (the one with the little bar running) and then rebooting in a loop.
I noticed that it was covered in dust and I mean covered in dust especially between the heatsink and fan so I started to take out the components and clean everything, this was going ok until I tried to take the heat sink off the processor I wiggled the heatsink to free it from the CPU and as I lifted it both the heatsink and the CPU came away together the CPU pin/bar that is used to insert the CPU was still in the lowered position. So anyway I gently prized the CPU away from the heatsink and noticed that the thermal paste had hardened to a hard black mess so I cleaned the heatsink and processor with a little touch of methylated spirit on a clean cloth then added new thermal paste and replaced everything and rebooted and to my horror the PC didn't work, it sounded as if it was going through the usual routine I could hear it booting in to the hard drive but nothing on screen, I mean nothing not even the DOS screen just a blank screen.
I have taken the ram out and dont hear any beeps from the computer.
What have I done have I fried the mobo or the CPU?
Please help!

The Mobo is an Gigabyte model ga-8simlnf
and the pcu is Intel celeron 2.66/256/533
sl7dl Malay
l426c217
Skt 478

[dgrmkrp]

well... taking the cpu off in that manner can't be good.. still, the thing that is worst is the lack of beeps.. usually, if there is no cpu in the mobo, and you don't have a small display to show you the progress, then there are no error codes whatever you do.. no ram, no video, it doesn't mater. So, if you have a cpu and it behaves the same, then you don't have a cpu but an expensive key-chain accessory the mobo shouldn't be affected, but I think you should wither try the cpu on a 100% working mobo or go to a local computer shop and ask them for help.

[Spawn-Inc]

i had the same thing happen with my brother AMD here. anyway check to see if any pins where broken off. if everything is fine check to make sure everything is plugged in properly and don 't over look anything, otherwise try the above.

[oops]

I was told that a quick test for the processor is to remove the heatsink and fan and boot up the computer and if the processor heats that it should be ok, I noticed that a few of the pins weren't perfectly straight so I straightened them and tried this and it heats and I thought magic but when I replaced the hs&fan it was the same result blank screen.

[crenn]

Reseat the graphics card if you're using one.

This isn't an uncommon thing for Skt478. I've had it happen with mine and it's the exact same processor.... although I haven't been able to test it.

EDIT: Correction, I have a P4 2.66 CPU. Not a celeron.

[Spawn-Inc]

ya my video card did that and it was barely moved. but like i said make sure everything is plugged in nice and good.

[oops]

Im affraid its onboard graphics