motherboard dead?

macromp

the retarded one
Joined
29 Jul 2002
Messages
426
i think my motherboard may have finally died. it's probably due since it's almost 4 years old. it's an Abit KV8-MAX3, and today all of a sudden the screen just died. at first i thought the computer had completely restarted, so i turned it off and when i turned it back on the motherboard make a nice beep sound for a second or 2 and there was nothing on the screen. i thought it was a problem with the monitor itself so i tried a different monitor and there was nothing again. the lights on the keyboard were on, i put my password in as i normally would to see if it loaded up and it did. so i'm thinking that the computer is working but the monitor connection is knackered. any ideas on what i could do or is it time to get a new mobo (resulting in a completely new computer since most of it is almost the same age)
 
If the PC beeps once and the keyboard lights flash at boot the MB, CPU and memory are fine.

A dead video card should give a beep code.

1) Shutdown, pull and reseat any cards and power connectors including those to the vid card.
2) Try another monmitor if you can find/borrow one.
3) Try another vid card or try the on board vid, if the MB has it, to verify the monitor.
4) Freaky time. I've heard of 2 systems doing this lately (mine is one). Turn off the monitor and PC. Turn on the monitor, wait 5 second then turn on the PC.
 
ok i bought a new card to keep me going for a few months, radeon 9550 256mb. it started up fine, installed the drivers then tried the net, videos and games, but while i was trying WoW i got this nice mess of black and green lines all over the screen and couldnt do a thing, so i reset and now whenever i try to do anything even remotely close to the graphics card (change desktop setting, control panel etc) i end up with a black screen, monitor light goes from green to orange (no input) and i cant do a thing, have to reset and try again. any ideas as to what's going wrong now?

edit: got it working sort of, will post in the graphics card forum with the next prob
 
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Power supply (going out of tolerance, line voltage fluctautes more in the summer and heat is usually higher). Get some canned air or a compressor and blow out the interior of the Power supply. After 3.5 years it is probably packed with dust.

or

monitor are still possibilities. Though most monitors die with a snap crackle pop in their vertical power supply I have seen other failure mechanisms.

Next time it dies try hitting num lock or caps lock on the keyboard and see if the lights change, try rebooting with ctl-alt-del (twice), hold a key down for a minute to see if the speaker starts squelling to tell you the key buffer is full, etc - to see if the processor is still running to help rule out MB issues.
 
could be a driver problem what was the older video card ? Could be you did not remove the old drivers properly and now have issue's
 
the video card before was a sapphire radeon 9800xt, and i used drivercleaner before installing the new drivers. this new card (HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon 9550 256MB) is still giving me the problems. i've got the 6.7 catalysts installed (also tried the omega drivers, but they're based on 6.5). sometimes when the screen goes off if i wait 20-30 seconds it eventually comes back on, sometimes after a nice display of red/green/black gibberish all over the screen. other times it will just freeze up completely and a reboot is the only way to get back on. i had a search around and other people have had the same problem with this card, someone suggested it may be due to games which use hardware acceleration (that's usually when it goes mad, while playing games. WoW mostly) although when i tried to use MP3Gain it also crashed it, so that made me think it was something else. all other applications seem to run fine but i cant open mp3gain without it freezing up. following up on the hardware acceleration thing, someone on a different forum asked about it but never got a reply. so i dont know whether to send it back and get a replacement, send it back and get an equally cheap nvidia card (i dont want a brand new card until next year when i plan to upgrade the whole machine) or just grin and bear it. sometimes it can freeze every 5 mins, whereas yesterday it froze up twice.

oh and i did use the compressed air on the power supply before i fitted the new card, cleaned the whole inside of the PC out. and on the occasions when it does come back after freezing, the keyboard lights do work (when pressing caps/scroll lock) and if i hold the key down like suggested when it has completely frozen nothing happens. if the speakers are on at the time i get a repeat of a few clicks or noises until i reset it.

edit: it's just completely frozen while i was doing nothing, so maybe it isnt games only causing it. and i managed to write down some of the error messages i've had so far.

STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER
and
STOP: 0x100000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M
 
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AHHA, codes. We can work with those.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q293078

MS says it's the video hardware not responding. Either a card type issue or possibly a bad card. You may be asking too much of the 9550. It is a limited card.

If you can exchange for another type I'd do that since other people are having the problem.

Option B is try another 9550, but no guarantee of success.

Option C is try some older Catalyst drivers, 6.1 etc. Make sure you do a driver cleaning before installing the older ones.
 
when i first rebooted and sent the error report it sent me to a site, different to that one, which had 2 solutions which were:
Solution 1: Install the most current driver for your video card (which i already have done) and Solution 2: Manually decrease Hardware Acceleration for your video adapter (which i did, but then the game wouldnt start at all, just got an error).

i'll see if i can get some older drivers to work with it then if not i think i'll be sending it back.

i'm thinking of swapping it for what appears to be the Nvidia equivalent (price and spec wise) the Leadtek WinFast A340TD GeForce FX 5200 256MB, would that be a good idea? if not i may be able to spend a little more and get a better card, but like i said i dont want to get a top notch card until next year, because i simply cant afford it right now (and vista).
 

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