Great value P4 mobo needed please!

xKratosx

xKratosx

xKratosx

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Joined
6 Jun 2005
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188
I believe my friend's motherboard is completely knackered, it's not recognising the DVD/CD drives even after I switched the cable around (the socket on the board seems dead) and it seems to be causing problems in Windows too; it's hanging for a few minutes at a time, as in, just stops doing anything, but the mouse etc moves around fine.

She has:

Intel (r) Pentium 4 CPU 2.40Ghz
256MB DDR RAM

To be honest, she's not a heavy PC user at all and the person who uses it most in the house is the 7 y/o kid, so the cheaper the better! Onboard stuff would be nice too, since I don't think she has separate sound or graphics.
 
Ah excellent, cheers guys! Think I'll get that one; there are a few on Ebay that come to £35~ delivered which sounds good, I might opt for a second hand one but they could be hard to get hold of :(

Do I need to buy any other parts btw?
 
Hmm, I think, or rather I hope, that it's the motherboard that's gone; as a result I've just gone ahead and bought this motherboard; but I've just had a horrible feeling that the Dell in question has some weird CPU cooler that's sorta huge and slants to the edge of the case where it outputs the air.

As a result I think I may need a new one, something cheap if possible, would this suffice?
 
Bah. After much messing around managed to fit the new motherboard (the cables going from the front panel to the motherboard for power/reset etc wasn't long enough etc) and get it set up what I believed was just right.

Tried powering it up; nothing. Well I say nothing, the front LED comes on and the CPU fan tries to spin but goes incredibly slowly for a millisecond then just does nothing.

Have tried re-fitting the CPU and heatsink, taken out the ram, unplugged the IDE etc all without any luck. Absolutely no idea what to try next. Any suggestions please? :(
 
Regarding the specifications...
Motherboard: ASROCK P4I65G-M-ASR
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.40Ghz
RAM: 256MB DDR
PSU: ... err, just checked and it says DC Output: 200W - But I guess that's wrong?! :)

Also, when I say it 'does nothing' I mean the fans don't spin, but the LED on the front of the case does stay on, and it takes the usual 5 seconds of holding down the power button to shut it off again.
 
Huge thanks for the reply, I'll try the first one; a new PSU and see how I get on with that. Well, before buying one I'll see if I can get an older spare one from work, fingers crossed it'll fit okay!

If it doesn't then I guess it's a case of looking into the other two, although the second sounds potentially costly and the third sounds tricky! :)
 
Have tried connecting it up to my Antec Sonata's TruePower PSU too, this time at least the PSU and case fans were spinning, although still no luck with the CPU fan, this time it wasn't even trying to spin at all. Didn't have a proper chance to test it though, was rushing before coming into work this morning, plus the only accessible monitor just had DVI and no VGA!
 
I apologise for keeping on, but...

I've worked out what the problem is now, even using the uber lame 200W PSU the fan is spinning fine with the motherboard outside of the case, or even when it's not screwed in properly; so I guess it's definitely shorting.

What kind of things can cause this? I'd of thought it'd be something underneath the board but can't see a lot; the only thing I can think of is the screw placement thingys below the CPU/heatsink - I'm using a new base now which doesn't have screws, but there's no metal contact so I'm not sure if that's the problem. I can't get rid of them either, I've tried using pliers on all four and none will budge not even in the slightest, bah!

Any advice on how to unshort this thingy would be absolutely fantastic, thanks!
 
Latest update: Fixed the shorting problem by laying some... weird material than a guy from work had. Anyway, the fans are spinning just fine now, the HDD, CD drives, keyboard etc are all receiving power, but it still isn't booting up.

It occasionally beeps three times which I believe is a memory problem, but we tried three sticks of memory, all of varying speeds, without any luck on any of them. Also tried a new PSU and have re-fitted the CPU and heatsink. Tried unplugging everything too and again had no luck.

To be fair, the guy who I was working with really knows his stuff, but we just couldn't find the problem. The only thing we can think of is that it's possibly the CPU, but we're really not sure. Any suggestions would be very welcome, or it won't be long before I'm on the hunt for a second hand PC to replace it which will really suck as I'll obviously have to pay for it myself since I've pretty much b0rked her PC :P
 
Really, really sorry to keep on, but I'm honestly completely at a loss with this now; I've tried everything I can think of and she keeps ringing me to see if it's fixed yet which is kind of awkward :P

It's still doing the same thing, sometimes three beeps, sometimes nothing. Either way the CPU fan, hard drive, CD drives etc all have power, but it's really inconsistent as to whether it's 3 beeps or nothing. Tried changing the memory once more to the stuff I use in this PC, exactly the same thing, sometimes 3 beeps, sometimes nothing.
 
Sounds like a good plan actually, thanks. Will give it another day or two and then will just put the old motherboard back in and give it her back, hopefully I can get a refund for the motherboard but if not I'll just stick it on eBay. Don't like the idea of losing 16 hours of my life plus £35! :(
 
What I'm currently thinking is I should just put the system back to how it was with the old board, give her the computer back and tell her to take it somewhere else because I can't fix it. I'll then either hopefully return the motherboard as being faulty, or if it comes back as being fine and I screwed up, just stick it onto ebay.

One question regarding the old board; when in windows it was hanging on regular occasions (it wasn't loading anything, you could move the mouse etc but 90% of programs just wouldn't respond) and also the CD/DVD drives were unavailable. Is there anyway of fixing this, or is the motherboard dead? Once again a huge thanks for all of your help!
 
She's given me a brand new Windows XP SP2 CD anyway, that's what I wanted to do originally anyway was just format; but you can't even see the CD drives in DOS so can't re-install :(
 
Huge thanks once again for the reply dpp, unfortunately I've given up on that board and have resorted back to using the old one;

Probably worth noting that this is a completely seperate problem and in no way relates to what I've said above ^ :-)

The old board's in, and it boots up fine. In fact, it gets to the Windows login screen really quickly, you hit enter to login, and then it just hangs. It doesn't load, but it doesn't do anything until you press ctrl, alt and del, and then it loads up the desktop very quickly too.

No problems with that, until you try to access something (even My Computer for example) that tries to see the CD drive and then that window just completely stops responding, the computer carries on just fine though, so if you wanted to load up My Documents for example it does it without a problem, whilst My Computer is struggling along in the background.

I've tried running an IDE check in the BIOS too; it comes up saying it's found the hard drive which 'passes' the test, but it can't find anything else, just takes ages and then says "No IDE device found" for the other three slots/ports or whatever they're called.

Any suggestions would be very welcome, and I'm really sorry for keep dragging this thread back up, but I really, really want to get this sorted :(
 
Nope I'm afraid I don't, but seems I can't even get that far anyway. I've just swapped the IDE cables around (at the motherboard end) and it's now detecting the CD-RW drive; I assume that means the IDE slot on the motherboard is dead and thus the motherboard is now useless?
 
I've just tried connecting the HDD and CD drive using the same cable now, and it's still only detecting one drive. I'm completely at a loss with this :/
 
Scrap that, nothing is working at all now; I've just tried all sorts of IDE/jumper combinations and it isn't detecting either of the CD drives nor the HDD. Tried using the exact original set up for the hard drive too; coming up saying no boot device and it can't see the HDD at all. FFS!
 
WJA96 said:
I'm going to be vaguely insulting now and suggest that you may have not set the master/slave jumpers correctly?
Click to expand...
No problem at all, you can never be insluting/patronising when offering help and I really appreciate it :) Unfortunately the master/slave jumpers are indeed set correctly, I've tried all sorts of combinations, but none of them seem to be working at all now :/
 
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