White substance on back of motherboard.

Hi.  Yes, i seem to have some sort of substance on the back of my motherboard.  Lemme give ya the quick rundown on everything   The mobo is an Abit IS7-E, which ive been using for about a year or so now with no troubles.  I read some other post's on the site about fried motherboards and i have all the typical signs and symptoms.  Fans only do a small shudder then everythings dead.  I switched out the psu with another to check that, same thing.  I checked the cpu in another mobo, and it works fine.  Both my 512mb sticks work fine in the other mobo.  I checked all the jumpers and all connections, everythings where it should be.  I didnt notice any blown resistors or anything like that, but when i took the board out i saw that it had streaks of a white substance on the back.  Almost like salt stains or something.  Anyway, i just wanted to see if anybody has ever encountered this before or what might cause it so as to avoid a similair mistake on the future.  If ive left anything out lemme know and ill post whacha need.  (Besides this was a great excuse to go get my IC7-G Max III....lol)  Thanks for your time.