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Motherboard Problem

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7 replies

by chrisms

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I recently changed a motherboard for a customer who came to me with a fault. The fault was that he had a windows protection fault message and he had to restart the machine. upon rstart, everything powered up until the boot process got to the hard drive, the power light would come on, but it would go no further. I tried a new HDD and recieved the same problem, so I changed the m/board.
Everything was fine for a month, then he came back to me with the same problem, same symptoms and everything. He has no surge protection, so that was my first thought, but then he told me he had moved house between times.
Could anyone shed more light on the cause of this problem, is it a power surge, or could it be a dodgy component in the machine? I don't want to have change m/boards every month or so if it can be avoided.
All solutions appreciated.
thanks all
Chris

7 replies

by stevelummis

Generally for this type of fault i would suspect core components Mobo CPU or Memory, however often overlooked is the PSU, checking the voltages with a multimeter is a quick test that costs nothing.
Sorry can't narrow it down.

by tsrl

chk whether the cpu fan is the culprit or not...
also chk the smps & ram

by chrisms

When I changed the board, i also changed the CPU and fan. Also I was thinking since it takes a month for thee problems to manifest themselves, would it really be a component problem?

by peter mac

I have had similar problems over the years.

One time was a memory problem (there are so many different symptoms of memory errors they can be a devil to track).

The other time i had a faulty drive cable - the fault would disappear for a month or two, then suddenly appear again.

by chrisms

I didn't change the cable when I got the new m/board, so I'll try that. I'll try the Memory as well, see if that helps, thx
Chris

by namron

Faulty ram will cause this, and be intermittant enough to be difficult to diagnose without a ram checker.

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