simpswr

Needledoc

Funny you should ask. I decided to look into it as my other options were none too appealing. The motherboard is Biostar P4M800-M7A. I think I found one at this site: http://www.hypermicro.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=MBBI002 but never having purchased a mother board before I don't know if I might be missing something before going ahead and purchasing it.

I've never replaced a motherboard before but I have added memory, drives, and PCI boards. Is replacing a motherboard that much more difficult? Thanks for the help.

Needledoc

Another motherboard related question. I never actually had the motherboard tested. The IT who evaluated my dead computer said he felt it was probably the motherboard because nothing he could do would get him out of the BIOS system?

Maybe I don't need a whole new board. I don't know enough about hardward to go about testing individual components to see what failed. Is that something that is generally done, or do you just unusually end up replacing the whole thing?

simpswr

Needledoc

Thanks Rich. Now for a really stupid question. I have what I presume to be a dead motherboard. As of now it has all the components and I have no extra ones. So do I take all the easily removable stuff and plug that into a new motherboard and see if it works? And then assuming it doesn't, do I start ordering things like a new CPU or something and try replacing them one at a time?

simpswr

I would get a new Power supply just for the sake of safety . . Motherboards amost alwasy fail before CPU's do . . Start with barbones . . Motherboard, memory videocard and monitor . . see it it posts outside the case . . if it does, move to the case and install everything else

Needledoc

Got it. Thanks.

simpswr

Let us know how it goes . .

Needledoc

Sorry, one more question. The safety issue: is that for my safety or the board's?

simpswr

the board . .you will heal, but a bad power supply can take out a good board in a second

Needledoc

Good to know, thanks. I've started researching power supplies and motherboards. I'll post again once I get everything up and running/or not.

simpswr

You can look at our Power Supply Selection posting:

Needledoc

Ok guys, here's an update. I was able to obtain the original XP disk and tried a repair install. No luck, so in semi-desperation (confidant of my back up) I did a clean install of XP.

Much to my great joy, XP runs fine, almost. The only problem I seem to have is that I can not connect to the internet. I can ping google just fine, and I can ping my router and all the other computers on my network. But they can not ping the new computer, nor can I get windows internet explorer to work.

A friend of mine has offered to install another ethernet board and driver believing that the issue might be with the ethernet chip and driver. Before I try that I thought I would touch base again and see if you have any other ideas. If the new ethernet card doesn't work, I will probably end up rebuilding the old computer and restore my disk to its original files and settings (which is probably what I should have done in the first place).

Thanks for the help.

BCCOMP

HI,
Glad to hear you have it up and running again.

Do you have any errors in the Device Manager?
Please post them if you do.

Did you go through the setup wizard to connect this computer to your Network?

Riskyone101

I noticed in the everest report you were infected with a virus ( xp windows)
The service it attacked is: nmsrvc.exe - which relates to a network (pure networks)
This would have to do with the computer not booting up and also why the internet explorer would not open to go online either.
The system time could not sychronise the time either with the internet either.

Did you use a harddrive utility first to wipe the Harddrive clean?...as installing windows and doing a format does not guarantee a clean HD, data can be retrieved by a third party program still. Formatting prepares the harddrive for the system files to be copied onto does not always wipe the harddrive clean, my guess here is this virus has reappeared through the install of xp windows again. This leads me to believe you have a boot sector virus on the harddrive still, it can hide from a format easily.

BCCOMP

Hi Riskyone101,
Needledoc has Pure Networks Platform and Network Magic installed (from thr Everest report) so I do not think the nmsrvc.exe file is an issue. The file nmsrvc.exe is needed for these apps to run.

The Everest reports may also not be up to date. It is from the original install and not this "new" install, so I do not think we can go by the report.

Thanks for pointing it out though

Needledoc
When you did the clean install of windows, were you able to tranfer the need files OK from your backup?
Have you setup this "new" computer to your Network?
Can you provide a new Everest Report if the above fails?
Bill

Needledoc

Hi Bill,

The reason that I did I complete reinstall was to try and demonstrate to myself that I could get XP to run on my Vista machine. My reasoning was that if I could do that, then maybe I could get my original XP disk to work (As a reminder, I could at least boot into safe mode with my original XP disk from the dead computer, but could not connect to the internet, the same issue I am currently having with the clean XP install.)

I don't know of anyway to transfer my important program files and registry entries. I have the disks for the program but they require a password available only to the maker of the program so I can not do my own reinstall of the program without recontacting the company and paying them for their time and efforts. I have been trying to avoid that because I have the program available on other computers that I can access. I just really wanted to have it on my personal office computer that I could use in the quiet of my own office. So it doesn't seem worth the cost to pay for the support I would need to have them reinstall it. At least that is my cost/benefit analysis at the moment.

I can not find any device error messages but will try to send you an Everest report when I get to work today. I was hoping that you might recognize from the description of my 'ping' issues what might be going on. I am not computer savy enough to understand the implications of being able to be pinged by other computers but not being able to ping them in return.

I may try to install the new ethernet card later today. Thanks again.

Needledoc

Needledoc

Update: I installed a new ethernet card and everything is working. I am able to connect to the internet. What I plan to do now is collect and save ALL the current drivers on to another disk. After that, I will use my backup to restore the disk to the 'old' XP files and reinstall the set of drivers that are currently working and see what happens. Thanks for the help and I'll let you know how things go.

Needledoc

BCCOMP

Let us know.
Bill

Needledoc

Well, it took me awhile but I finally got everything working. After installing the new ethernet card, I was able to go on-line. I then used my original back-up to restore the disk back to its original state. I then accessed the Reimage/PC Repair web site which analyzed my computer , downloaded some files and removed some others. The whole process took about 30 minutes or so.

Once I rebooted, I was able to log on to my original disk without any problems. So now I am running my original XP drive on a machine made for Vista. Yea!!

Can't say as I would recommend my approach though. It would probably have been a whole lot easier to just rebuild the original computer. For sure it would have been less expensive and taken a whole lot less time.

In any case, thanks for all the help. It feels good to have my computer back!

Needledoc