dai

yes they have the sata connections
if you have a spare molex you are better off with them they don't fall out like the sata cables do

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be4con

The pc store reckon it is the motherboard, so I guess I'm definitely in the market for a new board now...

Realistically speaking would I be better to start looking to upgrade completley here and get myself a new case so I have better options with the motherboard, whilst keeping the old processor, HDDs, graphics card and disk drives or should I just stick with an MATX board and the same case and accept that it's probably not going to give me a lot of flexibility?

Also, if I replace the board am I going to have to buy a new copy of XP as this is OEM?

mattlock

Sorry for the late reply. I've been very busy of late and haven't had much extra time to spend on the forum.

It depends on your needs and budget. If you are happy with the level of performance out of your current setup or aren't looking to spend alot of money then stick with what you have and aim for more of a direct replacement. If you go with a direct replacement then your current license would still be valid. If you get a newer motherboard, then it's an upgrade and considered a "New" pc which would require a new license under the Microsoft EULA.

Here are a couple of pulled motherboards on Ebay that is direct replacements. They have 30 day warranties.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/B3485-MSI-MS-7...713.m153.l1262

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/B3485-MSI-MS-7...80426095a31149

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Matt

be4con

Thanks again, no need to apologise for the delay in responding, the advice from everyone has been overwhelming.

Well, I'm a casual gamer and regular but not very demanding video and picture editor. I mostly use my pc for email, work (simple text and spreadsheet stuff) and net surfing and currently as a server for my music.

I've been pretty happy with the performance I've had so far, only really wanting to upgrade the fans to quieten the thing down. Money isn't really an issue. I had thought I'd be replacing the whole system and had earmarked £600 or so to build a new one. That said if I get this one to limp along for another 12 months for less than £100 I guess I'll be fairly happy.

I'm going to buy a NSLU2 to act as a network server for my music which will reduce the workload my pc has to do (and it's uptime) by at least 50%

What are you feelings on buying 2nd hand boards? Is it the sort of component you can trust 2nd hand? £50 after P&P does seem quite a lot when there are new boards for £45. Also I notice that those are version 1.2 whereas my board is version 10, does this matter?

If I use a direct replacement board will I be able to just plug my existing HDD in with XP installed on it and it will run, or will I still need to reformat the drive and reinstall XP? Although all my critical stuff is backed up on external drives it would be nice to salvage the little bits I don't routinely back up.

dai

i think you mean ver. 1.0 not ver.10
the 1.2 will be an upgrade on the one you have
you will probably find after the swap it will just boot up,if you change the m/b for something different run a repair install of windows
buying second hand you just have to use common sense on where you buy it from
i have dealt with a number of second hand boards without any problems

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be4con

Aah! You may be right it looked like ver 10 but the writing was hard to see.

mattlock

I've only bought a couple of pulls but have had good luck with them. The Ebayer has a great rating with only 7 negatives in the last 12 months.

So it's basically your decision from here. There's always a risk when buying a used board, due to the fact that you are dealing with a limited warranty. The fact that the saler offers a 30 day warranty (covers full shipping if DOA and returned within two days) is a bonus. The used boards I bought have only carried a warranty against DOA and had to be returned within 7 days. I think there's a good chance you can squeeze another year out of your system, but you have to decide if it's worth the risk.

As for the board version, there is very little difference in the two version, in fact the manual covers all 1.x versions. Same chipset etc, so you should have no issues with your current OS or the recovery CDs/partition that came with the PC. Version 2.x of the board supports DDR2 instead on DDR1 (not sure if there are other differences)

Keep us posted on your decision and how it works out for you.

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Matt

be4con

Well, they didn't charge me for the diagnostics at the pc store which was a bonus. I've decided to bite the bullet and get the replacement board from eBay. Hopefully should be here by the weekend and I can put it all together then. I'll let you know how I get on.

Do you think I am likely to have to do anything fancy with the BIOS other than ensuring the correct boot order and system time/date?

mattlock

It should be pretty straight forward. Load the setup defaults, set your time, date, and boot order. Save and exit, then it's off to the races.

EDIT:

Just a reminder. Be sure to clean off the old thermal compound and apply a fresh thin coat of Arctic Silver or something comparable. Good thermal compound applied properly makes a big difference in your CPU temps.

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Matt

vIrUs_32

yea the psu is dead. i've had this happen to me before....no be deal.

be4con

Well, generally good news. The new motherboard arrived, is fitted and the system boots. I've not been able to access one the IDE DVDROM drive yet but I need to go back into the BIOS and check that it is listed properly. The only other hardware issue is that there is no connection on the new board for the card reader but that's a minor issue, I never really use it and externals are ten a penny.

The major fly in the ointment so far is XP. I was able to boot to the CD and repair the current installation but during the repair it asked for a number of SP2 files which I couldn't locate. I tried to continue the repair ignoring those files but on first boot after the repair had finished XP crashed. It looks like I may have to reinstall XP completely which would be a pain but not an insurmountable issue.

If I were to install XP on a 2nd hard drive to boot to would I have any issues accessing the current drive to retrieve stuff from it, as long as the boot order is changed obviously?

dai

slipstream the sp into the xp disk with nlite and then use the slipstreamed disk to run the repair
http://www.nliteos.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en
you should be able to access the original from a parallel install

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be4con

My OS CD is a slipstreamed version of XP with SP2. That's the strange thing all the files should be present on the CD. A quick Google reveals I'm not the only person to have had this problem though.

I found today that I am able to boot to XP as long as I leave the disk in the drive which is no biggie and has allowed me to check that I had everything I needed backed up. I will just bite the bullet and reformat. It's probably about time it was done for housekeeping reasons anyway, it's been a couple of years. Is a strange problem though none the less.

I have also solved the problem with the other DVD drive not functioning properly too so it looks like the only issues I have now are software related.

dai

boot into the recovery console and run fixboot
check the windows partition is marked as active

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be4con

Sorry for the long delay, I've been away on holiday. Thanks again for the advice.

I ran FIXBOOT C: and recovery console claimed to have rewritten the boot sector. However, on rebooting I get the same Disk Boot Failure message. I can still boot with the XP disk in the drive.

I have also tried to use the Medion pc recovery software to reinstall the factory default settings and XP but the process failed. I attempted it twice, it went through all the correct steps, but then when I rebooted nothing had changed at all. I'm assuming this is because of the different motherboard preventing the recovery progressing

I'm considering just reinstalling XP, unless anyone has any other solutions at this stage. The pc silencer kit arrived this week from Germany and I have my new SATA DVD drive arriving on Friday so I'd like to put an end to all this if I can and get all the hardware and software sorted this week. My wife would like the pc out of the dining room and me off her laptop! :)

dai

boot with the xp disk in the drive and go into disk management and check the drive is marked active

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be4con

The option to mark C as active is grayed out so it must already be active. There is no option to mark the other 2 partitions as active.

dai