Newbie but need help with Motherboard

Computer Forum CPU, Motherboards and Memory
1

My home built computer up to 3 weeks ago was running fine. One day while surfing the net and downloading with a peer to peer program I had a loud “WUMMP” sound. It would best be described as a 110 volt direct short. The computer rebooted but I could not get it to post until the 7th try. Now it runs but locks up from minutes of running to hours of running.

The only program that will run descently is WinMX and Microsoft Office programs and Windows games, (solitaire, mine sweep, etc.). Anytime I try to run larger programs or games (Mechwarrior 4) the system just locks up. The system cannot take any benchmarking from any program (SIS Sandra or PC Mark 04) both of which worked fine before. Even checking for updates sometimes will lock up the system.

I also noticed a higher than normal system and CPU temp since this happened. System temp stays around 104 to 109 F and the CPU is around 98 to 104 F. Before the temps were opposite and about 8 degrees cooler. The only overclocking I have is Fuzzy Logic 4 that came with the motherboard.

The system has been running with this setup for about 4 years now with no problem. The system information follows.

System information:

MSI KT4 Ultra MS-6590 Latest BIOS, trouble started before flashing BIOS
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ Model 8, 2.1 GIG External Clock 166MHZ Socket A
2 sticks of Kingston memory KVR333X64C25/512
Radeon 9500 Pro AGPX8 128 MB
1 Maxtor (6Y120PO) HD 120 gig Boot Drive 40% used space
1 WD (WD2500JB-00GVA0) HD 250 gig Storage Drive 90% used space
1 CD rom, 1 Yamaha CD Burner, 1 floppy drive
Creative Sound Card SB Live
Linksys LNT100TX Ethernet card
Operating System Windows XP SP2

The best I could figure out is I beleive the motherboard shorted even though I cannot find any evidence of this. All fans and heatsinks have been cleaned and checked for proper operation. Video card and ethernet card were tried in another computer with no problem.

I had to try something so I purchased a new motherboard, Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe. What are my chances of connecting the boot hardrive to the new board and it running OK? Would I be able to try to load the drives for the new board before I disconnect it from the old board, would this be better?

I know the best way is do a clean install of the operating system with the new board to have everything work but I do not want to lose all my programs on the Boot drive (C) and not be able to get to my storage files on the other drive (D).

2

I’d replace the power supply firstly. If that’s bad, you might take more parts with it…and that’s going to make things more expensive and continue to cause all sorts of hell. Replace that first and see how things go.

3

When this first started to happen I tried a old 300 w power supply I have with no change. I went back to my 400 w.

I will try to change them again to see if there is anything different.

Thanks for the advice.

Tried old PS with same problems.

New motherboard arrived today will try to get it to get it to work. Will update my progress.

New motherboard installed and running. Had to do a windows XP repair to get it to run. Getting all the updates needed. System has not crashed yet but it is very slow. Hoping the updates from Microsoft will help.

4

Well installed the new board, Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe. Would post but the operating system would not start. Thought I would have to reload the OS. Finally the OS started and I went on line and started to DL updates from Microsoft. SP2 was not installed anymore. Finished with all needed DL then stumbled across some tweaks for Windows xp, the registry, faster boots and bandwidth. The more I tweaked the better everything began to run. Now I have all DL and updates done, new virus and firewall installed, and have not had one lockup yet or lost any my files except the windows xp sp2.
Mission accomplished!

5

Glad you got it fixed.