I will kick it soon

Captain Beer

Captain Beer

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Am trying to fix someones computer.

Everytime it starts to boot Windows, it freezes. I have tried Linux too.

I have changed the RAM, CPU, HDD, graphics card, power supply, and I still have the same problem. Is there anything else I can try before throwing the motherboard away?

Thanks!
 
Have u tryed putting the ram in a diffrent slot?

Edit: And reset the bios to defaults.
 
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BrianB said:
Have u tryed putting the ram in a diffrent slot?

Edit: And reset the bios to defaults.
Click to expand...

Ja tried that too, it's an Acer board so don't know what else to do.

moklet I will look into that, are you pissed off that I still have your German fetish movies?
 
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check the capacitors. If they are leaking the motherboard is toast.
 
You could try I guess, have heard of it working before, depends what the underlying problem is though.
 
Why don't you just get another motherboard and test if the PC will boot up with it, that way, you'll know for sure that its the motherboard and not another piece of hardware ;)
 
It's an old P3, I wonder how much a second hand board will cost.

This one is nice, graphics, sound, network all on-board.
 
Toilet Duck, the specs of your PC done sound too far off.

Intel 486 DX2 66MHz
16MB RAM (4x4MB)
Tseng 4000 1MB 256
512MB HDD
Creative Sound Blaster 16
Creative Quad Speed CD-ROM
14" Tatung VGA 800x600
Windows 95
 
antowan said:
check the capacitors. If they are leaking the motherboard is toast.
Click to expand...
I 2nd that - antowan had this problem with one of his mainboards, and a few weeks later I had leaky capacitors on one of my mainboards - I would never have known what was causing my PC to intermittently frieze & not boot - if antowan hadn't told me about bad capacitors...

http://www.badcaps.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

It affects older mainboards, so PIII fits the bill...
Toilet_Duck said:
Could I replace them?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't recommend it - take less time & money to get a new-ish mainboard & CPU etc...
Toilet_Duck said:
It's an old P3, I wonder how much a second hand board will cost.

This one is nice, graphics, sound, network all on-board.
Click to expand...
You could end up with another bad capacitors problem on an equally old mainboard, IMO not worth the trouble...
Nod said:
Obviously peoples definition of "nice" differ ;)
Click to expand...
Yep, very subjective, but at least Toilet_Duck admitted that 'nice' doesn't really apply here :).
 
Just had a look and I can see about 5 leaking caps!!!

Typical Acer ****. The slower the CPU I put in the further it gets with booting!
 
Replacing Capacitors is very easy!!! :D
They really aren't that hard to replace and last time I bought capacitors they were about 20c each, but I recommend getting 2 of each just in case. Try Communica or Electronics 123 if you're in the Pretoria region.

What have you got to loose except a few hours of your day and probably R10 - R20. Just read the guide on Badcaps.net and if you're willing to spend a bit more than R20ish rand buy a cheap bread board with a few really cheap diodes or resistors and practice your soldering technique. Its bound to come in handy again at some point, I don't go 2 months without having to solder something (and about 2 weeks without using a multi-meter on something to test if it's broken).

JUST BE SURE!!! to get the polarization correct else the cap is going to explode! You could injure yourself and potentially cause a fire so make sure you get them the right way round (and stand clear when you test the newly soldered MB ;) ). Caps are always clearly marked and usually the Printed Circuit board (ie. The Motherboard) is clearly marked also, else you should double check a capacitor before removing it.

One last thing, if you have some of the smaller caps they mention on Badcaps don't fret they aren't as expensive as they'd have you believe and I've gotten some before from Electronics 123 (something like ~R2 each or some such).
 
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