I recently found out that the various problems my computer has been having is down to a faulty BIOS chip in my asrock 939s56-m motherboard and was advised to buy the same model to avoid having to reinstall all hardware again.
After trying various shops and online stores however, it seems that this motherboard has been discontinued.
I know nothing about motherboards/hardware so would be grateful if anyone could suggest an alternative that would work with my computer.
I think an Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard should be fine with what you have, but there are probably quiet a few others that would be just as compatible.
I have an Asrock board in one of my PCs and I’m happy with it. However, my local computer shop’s owner does not rate them at all. He used to install them for customer builds, but had so many complaints re: the boards failing that he gave up on them!. He claims that Gigabyte boards are about the best. However, of course, that is just his opinion.
I recently put a new board in and it was easy to configure the HDDs and the AGP card by just going into the BIOS utility. After that, from what I can remember, XP will automatically detect and install all your other hardware after you have installed the new board and setup the BIOS.
If your BIOS chip is socketed, you might see if BadFlash can help get you a new chip.
MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, those are pretty safe bets. I usually end up with an MSI or Asus in one of my boxes, and they’re pretty solid.
For the motherboard, the key is it being a Socket 939 one. Those are starting to get a little scarce, given that it’s been canned with the move to AM2. If possible, a motherboard with an SiS chipset would be best, as that would be in the same family as what you have now. However, if that fails, snagging an nForce 4-based board would be the way to go.
The reason they say to purchase the same motherboard is because Windows can throw a fit if the chipset is too different. Now, I’ve had a motherboard give no trouble being swapped out, but be prepared to do a reinstall of Windows should the worst occur. I’d try to remove as much as possible from within Device Manager, swap motherboards, then power back up and let Windows re-detect everything.
never spread money on via or sis chipsets if you want performance
on intel side only buy nvidia or intel’s own chipset integrated mobos
on amd side ati or nvidia, none after them
if there’s gonna be a new bios socket it would cost you like a second hand mobo price so exchange your mobo with a computer seller for a nvidia socketed mobo, nforce4 ultra will hold you as well as your old one, even better than that.
