Is my MB dead?

M

MooN

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2005
Messages
150
Hello everyone,

The computer in question is actually my moms system. She called me stating that she heard a couple of loud popping noises and the system just shut down. When I went to her place to check it out, the system will only get to the boot screen and freeze. I can not enter the bios or anything. The mobo is an IP35-E.

Does this sound like my mobo is fried? Is it the power supply? I want to get it fixed for her asap, but need to know what to replace. I have no other parts to put in to test with.

TIA
 
Without known working parts, how do you test suspected dead parts?
 
You could open the case and look for blown capacitors, that would be a pretty good indication.

Popping sound usually comes from the motherboard or power supply, I think.
 
The PSU is an Antec True Blue, I believe 500w version.

What would a blown capacitor look like? Will it be burnt slightly?
 
it will look different from all the other caps :p yes, there should be some burn marks.

Borrow another PSU and see if it works after a visual inspection of the motherboard (and no blown caps nor burn marks were found).
 
When you turn the PC do you hear it post? (one solid beep)
Definitely check the motherboard's capacitors for any that are swollen or popped. Popped capacitors normally will leak a filament out of the top.
Swollen capacitors will normally have a raised or dome shaped tip. If there are any swollen/popped caps on the motherboard then that is a definite indicator.
Popped Caps:
DSCF0646_small.jpg


If you don't happen to see any, find some known good working RAM, and swap out all the sticks you have in there now and if it makes it past bios and starts searching for bootable devices then it may be your ram.
Pull any cards out of the PCI slots, and AGP/PCI Express (ONLY if you have onboard video to test with).
You can try another powersupply, but it doesn't sound like it might be the problem if you're booting and getting video. Sometimes though a power supply could be sagging in power, and the rest of the system will not want to proceed after the splash screen.
If you have swapped out all ram, and all your PCI banks are empty and it's still doing the same thing, maybe try to find a working CPU of the same socket (make sure your motherboard will support it) and swap out your old CPU, if its still freezing at BIOS, then you've pretty much completed the process of elimination and the motherboard is probably the problem.
 
Ok thx for the input guys. I will look at the system and report back.
 
Weirdest thing. So I went over to my parents to look for burnt capacitors and test some other things out. I didn't see any, so I hooked up the system and powered it up. This time, it went to the Windows splash screen and got stuck. So I rebooted and gave me a system disk error message. I tried rebooting again, and Windows started up fine, and it's been working fine ever since. What gives???

Should I buy a new power supply? The one I have is a 480w Antec True unit. It has the older plug for the older motherboards... on the IP35-E, like 4 pins aren't used. I don't know what it's called, I'm a noob. The cable that powers the MB.
 
Something is obviously flaky... I'd run some system diagnostic tools on everything.

Yes, I'd also upgrade that PSU. See if you can find an Antec Earthwatts 380W-430W for $30 or $40.
 
Sounds like a hard drive problem to me. What I would do is find out the make of your hard drive and then go to the manufacturer's website and download their diagnostic utilities they have available. Usually you want to run a long, and a short generic, and a read/write test. If you fail any of those then your hard drive is probably failing.
 
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