Testing a motherboard for faults?

J

jslater25

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 8, 2006
Messages
474
Okay, so my 9 year old daughter decided to be 'helpful' and powered off my running computer (including a number of running programs) by hitting the power button until it shutdown. Unfortunately, when I powered it back on the computer had a number of issues. It ran a system file check on the C:\ drive, and two of the three other hard drives were missing when I managed to get into Windows. I ran a couple programs before I noticed strange behaviors (programs taking longer to load, I was unable to access the Recycle Bin, and similar issues).

I rebooted the computer, and again it ran the system file check. Once that completed, everything seemed to work. For a couple hours. The next day, I had similar issues but the system file check didn't need to run.

Last night (three days after she shut down the computer), I noticed that the CD-RW doesn't recognize discs. But it will eject upon request and spin up when I put in a CD. One hard drive went missing last night. Twice. After rebooting in order to find the HDD, the system file check ran again.

I'm guessing that the method used to turn off the running computer has caused issues with hardware. Since its not limited to just one HDD, I think its the motherboard.

How do I test this? I unfortunately do not have a spare PC to plug everything into in order to check.
 
from what it sounds like there may be some bad secter on the HDD if windows is the doing it you may neeed to do a windows repair 1st thing sould do is check the bios and see if you see the HDD and the CD. i dont think its MB it sounds like windows may be hosed :rolleyes:
 
What's odd though is that sometimes all my HDD are there and sometimes not. And its not always the same HDD. I'm hesitant to reinstall Windows, but I might try a repair.
 
I would recommend that you download a Hard Drive Test utility like DFT and check the integrity of your drives. In some situations a faulty drive can affect other devices on the bus ( although it is more common on IDE systems ) it can happen on SATA systems as well.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Additionally you could try an application like active smart that runs in windows to see if you have an issue. One more option would be consider running a stress test application ( like Everest stress test ) to see if when stressing a certain component it causes instability.

http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm
http://www.lavalys.com/support.php?lang=en

Hope this helps and please enjoy the rest of your day.
 
I agree. I would guess that one of your HDD's got corrupted. It can cause weird issues like the one you're describing.
 
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