Ipod

[Brewman]

Anything is fixable.  Gauge the repair costs against the price of a new machine.

[autoplay]

Are you convinced it's your mobo? Have you tested the power supply,and each feed/rail etc?


Yes you can put in a diff mobo,in fact,for I and many others,it's easy if you take your time,and the right precautions.  If you plan on switching out your mobo,and keeping everything else in your sys,you'll have to find a compatible mobo,that will accept your current ram and cpu.  If your cpu is old/outdated....and your ram is small/slow etc...you might want to at this time,look into upgrading all three elements.

[96SC]

Are you convinced it's your mobo? Have you tested the power supply,and each feed/rail etc?
.

The only thing I am sure of is that the computer isn't in my house.
All the info I have gotten is second hand from my son, who's friends are doing the diagnostics.  If they come back with a dead mobo edict I'll suggest the power/rail etc.  Until then we are trying to stay out of their hair as they are college students and don't have a lot of time to dedicate to it.


Thanks to all of you for your input.

[mattNY]

I agree with autoplay - it's more than possible that it's the motherboard, but when you say that 'the USB is ok' this doesn't sound quite right to me as the USB ports are part of the motherboard 99% of the time (not many PCI USB cards around anymore).  Also, as I mentioned the USB ports should be protected from overload failures, so that implies something fishy off the bat.  It might well be your power supply, as autoplay suggests - Power Supply failures are much more common than motherboard issues but cause flaky problems that people often blame on the motherboard.

If your son's friends have a spare ATX power supply, it's a 5 minute job to swap in a new one, fire it up, and see if the same problems manifest themselves.  I'd give that a try if at all possible.

Brewman is right, a new motherboard isn't that difficult to obtain and swap in but you should weigh it against the cost of a new machine.  If your system is recent within the last 2 years, it's probably worth it to replace the MB.

[96SC]

Update on my computer 'repairs'.  Son's friend have hit a brick wall so I'm taking it to a guy in our plant, a real computer repair person.  I didn't know he had a repair business until 3 days after the other folks had it.  

A short conversation on what happened and he thinks it's the mb.  I'll be sure to mention rails etc and keep you interested folks informed.

[96SC]

Got the word from a qualified computer technician.  It's the m.b. and NO the Ipod didn't do it.
The tech is going to rebuild (or should I say update) the system for us, says it will be like a new one.

 

[mattNY]

Glad you got it resolved, thanks for the updates!  Hope you're back up and running soon.

[96SC]

Finally got our computer back, here's the run down:


Parts:
Motherboard w/3.20 GHz Processor and case

Software included/loaded:
Microsoft Office 2003
HDValet
CCleaner
SpyBot 1.4
AVG AntiVirus Software
RegCleaner
PCRescue
Microsoft Office 2003 and Windows Updates

At a cost of $175.00

I don't know what some of the software is (CCleaner, HDValet, SpyBot 1.4, PCRescue) but I have it now.  
How did I do?  Is some person taking the day off since they made enough off this one transaction?  I have a gut feeling that the amount is very reasonable, but would like an outside opinion.

 

  

[mattNY]

The guy did you a nice favor, that's a great price for parts and labor.  Office 2003 must be illegal of course, unless you owned that before, but who's keeping track