[gotissues68]

My mom's box died today

Abit VH6-II mobo
Intel Celery 950
128x2 SDRam
Ati generic vid card
Broadcom HomePNA adapter
CDROM
HD Drive
Floppy

Something blew up and I'm not sure what. I haven't had a full chance to inspect it, but the machine does power up. She says she plugged in the mouse while the machine was running .. and her screen went blank.. I powered the machine down and then back up and did indeed smell something burning, she had noticed it was making some type of "clicking" noise in the days prior but I was never able to verify this or what was causing it.

Anyhoo I would like suggestions as to what to do with this one. It is a custom built system.... and without looking at it right at the moment.. I'm guessing motherboard died, My only fear is replacing the mobo and then finding out it was some other part which then causes the new board to blow up, has it been anyone's experience that if a component (lets say for arguments sake) a video card goes tits up fries the AGP slot, can the card be considered suspect to cause another issue with a replacement board?

Drew

 

[gotissues68]

I finally got a chance to look under the hood.. pretty easily identifiable on-board chip melt.. guess it felt it was time to go to motherboard heaven.. so now I have the dilema of do I just replace the board.. or do I replace mobo and proc..

 

[johnwill]

No reason to replace the processor, plugging the mouse in while the machine is running is a bad idea, now you know why.

 

[gotissues68]

defeats the purpose of plug n play though doesn't it

 

[johnwill]

Well, PnP is one thing, but most PCI cards are PnP, and you don't want to plug and unplug themwith power on either!

 

[gotissues68]

heh indeed... to continue this thread unfortunately I must.. I went out and purchased a new mobo .. thinking all would be cured.. :angry2:

The new board boot once.. yes once to the point where I saw text on the monitor then nothing.. I only had the CPU, RAM and Vid card plugged in.

I've ruled out the mobo since its brand new .. When it did boot succesfully I did see that it did detect the RAM, so I'm thinking the RAM is ok..

I replaced the video card with a known good working one (my G4 Ti4400 to be exact) and still nothing.. I popped the ati rage pro that was in the machine that died into my box and it gave no joy.. so I'm thinking its dead.. so at this point I know I have a dead mobo, dead video card..

I'm thinking the CPU is dead as well ... since this board stated it indeed did support its clock speed of 950Mhz... and it did detect it when it booted up that one time..

I don't have any other available CPU's of that brand and clock speed to test with though
..

I also tested the power supply (again used my known good working one of my system) and I received the same results.. just to be sure I also changed monitors!.... :|

The commonality between the boards, proc, ect is of course a blank black screen (altho its getting a video signal just not displaying anything).. and neither gives me ANY bios beeps which also leads me to suspect a damaged CPU..

So it looks like I'm gonna have to get a new board, new cpu, new power supply (I don't trust the one I have ...) and a new vid card at minimum.. unfortunately I'm lacking all the funds to do this all at once (thank god I have spare ram and a spare HD just in case)...

Can someone confirm or disaffirm my thoughts on the no BIOS Beeps = Dead Processor theory though please?

 

[johnwill]

Well, you could still have a dead MB, I've had several new ones DOA. I still have difficulty with the processor dying because of a hot plugin of the mouse, the CPU is pretty well isolated from the mouse and keyboard ports.

Obviously, a new processor and MB will probably fix it, but it's a shame to toss out a new MB!

 

[Drupy]

[
Obviously, a new processor and MB will probably fix it, but it's a shame to toss out a new MB! [/B]

Toss it out???? Shoot box that thing up take it back and tell them you have no idea whats wrong with it.

 

[gotissues68]

Heh I did take it back, they think it was the processor since it apparently scorched a little bit of the socket on the new mobo I bought on friday... thank god they took it back .. so I've converted mom over to an Athlon 1.1 Ghz So we're an all AMD family now except for my mail server which is running a lowly 466 celeron.. (soon to change I think as well). Now I just have to friggin re-activate windows .. since the hardware changed so dramatically.. bah **** windows..!!!