My desktop (over four years old) got a bluescreen yesterday (Merry Christmas!) and now will not boot up.
I unplugged all the memory cards and started up, and got no beeps. Also, I see that my keyboard is getting no power. I read elsewhwere online that this points to a problem with the motherboard.
Is that true?
And if it’s true, is it reliably an indicator of motherboard problems specifically or could it be a problem with the processor?
I ask because I’m thinking of just buying a new motherboard and replacing the old one. I think I can probably find a serviceable one for fifty bucks or so. (Considering the current one is four years old and considering I just need something that will let me put the very same disk, ram, video card etc in.)
Also, if I replace the motherboard, will this screw with my OS installation or any other software and other data I have on the hard drive?
Motherboard is much less likely than failed power supply, which is cheaper and usually easier to replace (not so much in Dell cases, which are custom). Power supplies fail all the time; they’re probably the most common device to fail in PCs. Motherboards fail out of the box or after brief use – I’ve never seen one fail after four years, except in a laptop (which gets much more physical abuse).
I didn’t mention it doesn’t seem to be the power supply since all fans run and all lights in the case seem to be working correctly. CD drive spins, hard drive spins*, etc. It simply doesn’t boot up, sends no signal to the monitor, and no power though USB. This is what led me to think mobo rather than power supply, but is that wrong?
*It makes five or six quick “reading” noises in succession when I first power on, then as far as I can tell goes completely dorman. But those first reads I interpret to mean there’s no problem with power. As for why it reads a few times then stops, I speculate that either means there’s a general startup spin it goes through that has nothing to do with any software, or else the OS install is so corrupt it just gives up even trying to find the OS after a few reads.
(Also, as to whether it would fail after four years, let’s just say I haven’t taken very good physical care of this machine and leave it at that…)
It depends on the design of the motherboard. Some of them will give a beep code if the CPU is dead. Others will simply fail to boot up. It is possible that when one died it killed the other one with it, so replacing only the motherboard or the CPU alone may not fix it.
You also theoretically could have a power supply problem, but a dead motherboard or CPU is more likely based on the blue screen that you got (a power supply failure would much more likely result in the computer just shutting off). You can jumper out the power supply so that it will start up and then you can measure its voltages (assuming you have a meter) so you can tell whether the power supply is dead or not.
Assuming the power supply is ok, I’d say just replace the CPU, motherboard, and RAM all at once. Think of it as a Christmas upgrade for yourself.
Ok, after previewing I see that you’ve eliminated the power supply as the problem, but I’ll leave that comment in for anyone who happens to come into the thread with a similar problem.
Also, sometimes it is easier to reinstall the OS after swapping out the motherboard, but it usually can be done without a reinstall. Windows will just do the old “found new devices” and reboot itself a whole bunch of times as it sorts through the new hardware on the motherboard.
Occasionally my usb devices stop working, but i see the desktop continues. Videos play out, the clock updates. Does that sound like a mobo issue? Perhaps the usb controller is dying?
Another issue occurs to me: In my head is the (quite possibly insane) idea that maybe if you replace the mobo on a system which came with Windows pre-installed (i.e. you don’t have your own Windows discs from which you could, yourself, install Windows onto any system–rather, you’ve just got Windows recovery discs") the OS may decide it’s not been installed on the system it’s supposed to be installed on and refuse to work, or something like that.
Is that something correct I heard somewhere or is it a silly idea my brain made up?
This is roughly true as far as I recall. If you do have a full install CD/license for Windows and you run into “activation” problems, you can probably call Microsoft get them to re-activate your windows on the “new” machine. Otherwise, you might not have a valid license any more - in any case, I recommend you call Microsoft anyway; all of this stuff has changed a lot over the last decade, and I can’t give you anymore details than that.
I had something similar happen last summer. I chased viruses, memory, OS and HDs all over the place before carrying the PS to a store that checked it as failing. A mere $37 later I was back in business. My fans operated too and sometimes the whole computer would work for hours before failing. I was sucker punched.
It depends how much of the system has changed, I would think you would be OK with swapping out just the mobo, if you changed the CPU as well it may require re-activating.
If a new motherboard takes ddr2 800 memory, and the sticks I have are ddr2 555, dies that mean I need to get new memory too or can the motherboard handle 800 or less?
Is it an ASUS motherboard w/ SATA HD?
I had these same symptoms. Tried all the normal stuff, but what finally worked was to unplug the SATA cables, power-on the machine, turn it back off, and reconnect the cables. It’s worked twice now on different occasions.
No, it doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t know why it worked, but it did.
