Dell Inspiron 530 OS/Motherboard question

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DarkCyber

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 14, 2003
Messages
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I have a Dell Inspiron 530 with an Intel Core 2 Q6600 cpu and with a Dell 0FM586 motherboard with the P35/G33/G31 chipset. This pc has been doing sporadic lock ups and I am leaning toward something going out on the motherboard. Replacement boards for this are like $120 - $150. I was just going to order a new motherboard from Newegg for around $40 with a P35/G31 or a P35/G41chipset and wondered if the Dell Windows XP Pro that is installed will be looking for a Dell BIOS and not boot up? Or does it just search for the BIOS when you are installing the OS?

I have done something similar to this with custom built systems I have built in the past when I had to replace a motherboard, Windows XP will usually work just fine, because it detects the same chipset and all. But I was not sure how the Dell OS would react.
 
I had to replace my mother's HP Pavilion's FoxCon board with a BioStar when it crapped out. It would not accept the OEM key from HP's case sticker. I couldn't say about Dell's. I ended up using one of my Technet key for my mother. Shh. :-P

She's due for an upgrade soon anyways, probably around Christmas time or so, so she won't have my key for much longer. No harm no foul.

The biggest pain in the ass buying aftermarket motherboard won't be the Windows key however. The case's wiring harness (power, HDD lights, reset switch, etc) was proprietary. I had to cut the wires and splice it with another case's harness I had lying around because HP's case wiring doesn't fit standard board layouts.
 
Azhar said:
I had to replace my mother's HP Pavilion's FoxCon board with a BioStar when it crapped out. It would not accept the OEM key from HP's case sticker. I couldn't say about Dell's. I ended up using one of my Technet key for my mother. Shh. :-P

She's due for an upgrade soon anyways, probably around Christmas time or so, so she won't have my key for much longer. No harm no foul.

The biggest pain in the ass buying aftermarket motherboard won't be the Windows key however. The case's wiring harness (power, HDD lights, reset switch, etc) was proprietary. I had to cut the wires and splice it with another case's harness I had lying around because HP's case wiring doesn't fit standard board layouts.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input. One thing I was wondering is if I just swapped out the motherboards and did not reinstall the OS. About 99% of the time Windows XP will come up and fuss about it and have to redetect the new boards drivers and such, but will usually work just fine. But I have never tried this with a non-custom pc either like HP, Dell, Gateway...etc. but I figured it should work.

Anyway, an update. I may not have to do all this after all. I did a clean restore from the Dell restore partition and so far it has solved the freezing up problems I was having. I thought it was probably some thing software related either junk somewhere or something in the OS, but so far so good. Saves me from having to rip out the motherboard now. :D
 
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