Computer help... dead mobo possibly?

InAmberClad

Hi all,
I'm stumped with a computer I'm trying to fix for my brother and thought I would just float it to see if I'm on the right lines in other peoples opinions since it's been a while since I poked around inside one.

The PC has been getting slower and behaving erratically over the last couple of weeks. Some of the USB ports on the back don't work anymore, doing anything complicated in Windows takes an eternity, that kinda thing. Suddenly on Sunday morning the PC won't turn on. It powers on for a few seconds, doesn't post, then resets. I drove over to take a look at it last night, I reseated everything but it still wouldn't post. I then disconnected everything non essential so it's just Mobo, CPU, CPU fan, HDD and PSU. It posted and I got into windows. It was still HELLA slow. The CPU was running at like 90% all the time even ten minutes after windows loaded. I decided to reset just to check that the hardware side of things was genuinely okay without the extra components, but it didn't come back to life, it did the no post reset cycle thing another few times before it decided to post again and boot properly. I brought it home with me last night and my first port of call was swapping out the PSU with a known good one... no dice on the first four boot attempts, the fifth got it into windows. I've tried resetting it again since and had to do it several times again.

So I'm currently looking at a machine that will randomly boot one in five times, and when it DOES actually boot is running hiddeously slowly. The USB devices aren't even recognised for several minutes after windows loads. It does this regardless of what Power supply is connected, whether it's running onboard graphics or PCI-E graphics, whether you have one hard drive or two, whether the DVD drive is connected or not etc.

I'm left assuming that either the Mobo or the CPU (or both) is circling the drain. Does that sound like a safe assumption given that I've tried known good PSU and RAM? It's already a Frankencomputer, it's my mom's old first gen dual core CPU and Mobo, my old GFX, PSU and RAM, a case from a friend etc. Nobody will be shocked if it's had it, but I'd hate to make my brother shell out for a new mobo if it turns out to be something stupid that I didn't check. I don't have a spare CPU to swap in unfortuantely, and given it's age if it's either the CPU or the Mobo that's gone then I'll replace them as a pair either way.

Have I missed checking anything?

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and has any thoughts!

ASimPerson

If it weren't so old, I'd suggest swapping out the mobo with one that uses the same chipset, but I'd at this point your brother is due for a more thorough upgrade if he's willing.

InAmberClad

It certainly seems that way doesn't it, thanks. The trouble with swapping is I can't test most of my known good parts in his box because his hard drives are IDE, his graphics card is AGP, and the CPU slot is LGA775. The only thing I've been able to swap out is the PSU.

I have now also discovered that it absolutely WILL NOT boot in any way if there is an AGP card installed or any drives connected to the second IDE channel.

Hevach

Have you tried a fresh OS install?

Try hitting the F8 menu and select disable automatic restart on failure to force a blue screen. The code from that is sometimes useful, but not always - some motherboard and CPU failures can give hard drive or memory errors.

When you say it will not boot with those devices connected, do you mean will not boot (i.e. operating system) or will not post (i.e. BIOS)?

Bendit

randomly boot one in five times

Because of that, I would not bother with an operating system re-install. You need a healthy system to begin with to consider that, or you'll just waste your time.

You need to consider if spending money on a new motherboard is worth the gamble.

I personally have never seen a CPU crap out. I have seen memory go bad though.

I would say mobo would be the 1st thing to replace. But a good mobo is a hundred bucks for sure. I would probably invest that money in totally new hardware. Depends how old and how attached you are to your current gear.

my 0.02 dolla.

EDIT: Make the power supply functions properly. I have seen erratic operation from slowly-failing PSUs.

Essee

InAmberClad wrote: »

It posted and I got into windows. It was still HELLA slow. The CPU was running at like 90% all the time even ten minutes after windows loaded.

I agree that it's time for a hardware upgrade, but this sounds like his current hard drive has malware on it as well, so keep that in mind when you put together his new computer.

Bendit

Not nece. If the BUS is acting up, it might appear like malware due to slowness. It could actually be the data trickling down a busted BUS. Much like a failing HD does.

InAmberClad

Thanks for taking the time to reply. The first thing I did when I got into windows was to run malwarebytes and spybot, they found 6 Trojans but the system was no faster after removal. I also went into msconfig and disabled every pointless startup item to no avail.

In regards to the Gfx and DVD drives it won't even post. I also tested it with the gfx card but no ram to see if it would give me a ram error beep but nothing, just endless reset cycling.

I haven't tried reinstalling windows Yet because it didn't seem worth it given I can't even get it to post.

I think I'm just going to have to tell him it's time to move on. Finding compatible parts seems to be more difficult and expensive than finding better newer equivalents.

Just as a measure of how slow this thing is being I just right clicked on the desktop to create a new folder. From clicking to finally getting the folder on there took almost three minutes.

I have also discovered the DVD drive won't open anyway and the front panel inputs are all dead too. In fact I'm starting to feel like this is all some sort of elaborate wind up!

Essee

Yeah, it's really obvious that all the hardware is dead... I'd just be careful with how you salvage data from the old machine since, like I said, who knows what kind of AIDS it has given that he was somehow able to operate the computer in its current state. :P It's not automatically full of malware though, this is true. I certainly wouldn't try to figure out whether or not it DOES have malware in its current state. There's no point trying to do anything (including reinstalling Windows) on it now. That thing is dead. That's waaayyyy more dead than any computer my entire extended family has ever owned, so congrats to him for somehow continuing to use it that way I guess. So seriously, don't spend any more time on that thing.

And yes, new parts are going to be way cheaper than finding parts from an old standard, and they're likely going to be way more powerful no matter how cheap they are. You can probably check out the build thread in Moe's on here to try to figure out what he needs and how much it'll cost him.