Is it the Motherboard?

Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
edited March 2007 in Hardware
Okay guys simple question in which I just want to get 2nd hand advice. Last night I had a client call me at 11:00pm with an urgent plea to fix his PC that died on him while in the middle of a project.

He brought the PC over last night and told me he was in the middle of deleting a few E-mails when the system just crashed, or went to a Black screen. He said the system hung so he shut it down by holding the power button in the front. He than booted it back up to get a off the screen message just past the bios, he wasn't able to tell me what it said.

So I tired hooking up the PC to my bench last night and got no signal from the VGA port, I tired a few cables and a few monitors and nothing "at this point I already think it is a Mobo issue" I also noticed when the system booted up, the bios was silent, so quickly looking up the mobo online I read the manual and reset the bios per the manuals guidelines... "I remembered some funky connector with this mobo" but anyways still nothing, so instead of scratching my head I tested the HD, the Ram, and PSU in my other systems, without failure they seemed to work fine and the memory showed no errors in MemTest. Once again making me say mobo. Now I didn't have another setup with a 478 socket so I couldn't test the CPU, but I am fairly positive it is running fine.

To note this PC had a similar issue awhile back with a crap E-machine motherboard. I replaced it with the current Biostar mobo a new PSU and some DDR400 2 x 512MB chips. The system ran great for 2 months. But now it is back at being broken again.

So my question is would you also pin point the mobo again in this issue? And what would cause this PC to die twice? Could it be the CPU making the PC die? I have never run into this type of issue 2 times on the same machine... just want to make sure I am diagnosing it correctly.

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2007
    As you mentioned, it's rare for a CPU to just up and die suddenly. With the other stuff checking out fine, I'd suspect either the board or the PSU.

    How did you test the PSU in the other machine? Just by plugging it in? If that's all you did I'd check the voltages.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    profdlp wrote:
    As you mentioned, it's rare for a CPU to just up and die suddenly. With the other stuff checking out fine, I'd suspect either the board or the PSU.

    How did you test the PSU in the other machine? Just by plugging it in? If that's all you did I'd check the voltages.

    I checked the voltage with my handy PSU checker :) and tyested it in another system
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2007
    The main thing I'd be concerned with is that there is a partial ground somewhere causing the mb to slowly die over time. Another thing might be the power at the customer's home or office. How hard would it be to check his wall voltage?
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    Not very hard... I have him on a nice UPS that has only been tripped 2 times last time I saw the PC in the office. But I can check the wall voltage...

    This guy has also had the PC on for 1 month timelines without rebooting, I have to force him to run updates etc... most often I do it when I come in for 3 month cleanings.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2007
    If he's on a UPS then I doubt it's a wall voltage problem, unless you have reason to believe it may be defective.

    The fact that the first MB - an eMachine job - croaked does not surprise me. The Biostar MB may have just been one of those things.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    Well the motherboar is under warrenty so I am sending it back for replacement, in the mean time he is wanting his PC back up and running ASAP... so I ordered a new one from the Egg :)
  • NomadNomad A Small Piece of Hell Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    Sledgehammer70 wrote:
    Not very hard... I have him on a nice UPS that has only been tripped 2 times last time I saw the PC in the office. But I can check the wall voltage...

    This guy has also had the PC on for 1 month timelines without rebooting, I have to force him to run updates etc... most often I do it when I come in for 3 month cleanings.

    My girlfriend's household does that. Three women all using one computer with no real concept of preventing spyware. Problems that persist today are ones that have persisted since December since they never shut it off.

    Sounds like a motherboard problem though, particularly if all the other hardware on the computer works.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    If two motherboards have gone that fast in the system, I'd at least suspect the PSU. Check all of the caps on the motherboard, if any of them are blown, it might be the PSUs fault.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    The first motherboard survived for 2 1/2 years, the 2nd was installed on Jan 13th 07 according to my records. I originally changed out the PSU that was showing faulty readings, with a brand new OCZ PSU :) I don't think the PSU is the issue this time, as the voltage is showing to be solid and the PSU works with 2 other systems I put it in.
Sign In or Register to comment.