• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

How do I find out if the CPU or MB is the problem?

Gepetto

Gepetto

Gepetto

Associate
Joined
5 Apr 2008
Posts
2,136
Location
Deepest, Darkest, Essex.
A PC I built up for a mate a couple of years ago has gone breasts uppermost, and I'm working through the parts to try and find out what's gone bang. It was simply giving a black screen but all fans were spinning up and the machine seemed to be trying to boot from the CD player.

Anyhow, I have another 775 MB processor and RAM so I figured I'd find the issue through a process of elimination. His original setup was an Abit IN9 32X-MAX with an E7300 and 4 gig of RAM (two corsair 1GB sticks and 2 PNY 1GB sticks). It was also running an Nvidia 7300 graphics card.

I initially expected the problem to be either the graphics card or the RAM but both of those swapped over to my Gigabyte G33M-S2/Q6600 rig with no problems at all, so I now figured the problem to be the MB. Well, it is a little long in the tooth, and CPU's don't usually die, but when I swapped the processor I found that it wouldn't boot into Windows. Well, it would, but only into safe mode. On reading up a bit I discovered that I should clear the CMOS, which I did, but still no boot beyond the BIOS.

Now, as far as I know, I should get nothing from a broken CPU but the E7300 will not open Windows whilst the Q6600 will, so I'm a bit stumped. I did try safe mode, and deleted and refreshed the CPU in the Device Manager, and it still would not boot Windows properly. I have swapped around processors in the Gigabyte before although I've not stepped down as far as the E7300, so if anyone can point me in the right direction that would be most appreciated. :cool:
 
mine did that when two of my RAM modules decided to throw a hissy fit and die, I would turn it on (LGA775, Q6600) and all the case lighting, water-cooling and such would come on, but nothing, just blank screen. though if it works with another CPU in that would suggest a CPU problem.
 
Have you considered that it might be the hard drive, or some parts of the o.s that have corrupted and gone 'breasts uppermost'? I know you said that it boots with the core 2 quad, but I'm just wondering :l its a strange case indeed :p
 
Last edited:
I would be inclined the think it was a hard drive problem, perhaps come corruption of the boot partition needed to boot into windows ?
not too sure
Try it with another hard drive if you can and post back :)
 
Thanks for the heads up guys. I think the HD was corrupted. The processor is fine now, on a format and fresh install, and it turned out that there was an OEM recovery partition on the HD, which might have contributed to the boot issue.

I'm still a bit confused as to why it would work on one processor and not the other though.

Now need to re-check the MB too.

Cheers. :cool:
 
Gepetto said:
Thanks for the heads up guys. I think the HD was corrupted. The processor is fine now, on a format and fresh install, and it turned out that there was an OEM recovery partition on the HD, which might have contributed to the boot issue.

I'm still a bit confused as to why it would work on one processor and not the other though.

Now need to re-check the MB too.

Cheers. :cool:
Click to expand...



Perhaps the corrupted windows was confused by the change in CPU? :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom