dgrevillius
Member
Okay. I am like 95% sure my problem is the motherboard being faulty, but I am going to post the symptoms for everyone else to diagnose to see if there is anything else I should check prior to driving 45 miles to Fry's to replace the mobo.
I just got a new mobo, PSU, case, and CPU cooler yesterday at Fry's. I got it all put together last night, and installed XP Pro. Everything seemed smooth and it was working like a charm.
It installed XP SP3 and then I went to bed. This morning, I turn it on and all is well at first. It boots up and then I suppose finished installing SP3 (as I just shut it down last night, didn't actually reboot.) Then, the problems started happening.
I was setup to connect to this computer via remote desktop, as it was to be a web server, I didn't want to get a monitor for it. After the reboot, I was never able to reconnect via remote desktop. The HDD light was solid and when I went into my router to attached devices, it was not listed. So, I hoooked the VGA cable to it to try to see what was going on and I got no display. My monitor said no input detected. Okay, so I hit the reset and the "windows did not start properly....blah blah" screen came up and it froze on the countdown. So, I was forced to reset again. This time I was able to tell it to start windows normally. It booted into Windows and just when it seemed everything was fine, it suddenly restarted with no warning. It boots into Windows again and windows tells me it recovered from a problem with the RAM. It then froze with lines accross the screen, as if the video (integrated) was malfunctioning. On reboot, the mobo did several tests and it said the RAM was perfectly okay, as well as everything else. It boots into Windows again and once again, it freezes with lines.
So, I think perhaps, slim chance, but perhaps the SP3 update was screwed up, so I pop the CD in the drive and reboot. This time, it does nothing. It just sits there, no BIOS screen or anything. So, I reset again. It then tells me the CMOS checksum is bad and some options. However, it is once again frozen so I can't select anything. Once again, reset. This time I tell it to load default values. Of course, the default (for some reason) puts the HDD in front of the CD drive in boot order, so it boots into Windows again, and freezes again.
I reboot, change the boot order, and boot to the XP CD. It then froze twice on installation, once while formatting the partition, and then as soon as it got to the first screen after loading all the files.
Sorry that is so long. Does anyone have any ideas for anything else it could be other than a faulty mobo??????
Specs:
MSI G31M3-F V2 mobo
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140
1 GB (2x512) Micron DDR2 667
40 GB EIDE HDD
Some cheap offbrand CD-RW
Thank you!!!
I just got a new mobo, PSU, case, and CPU cooler yesterday at Fry's. I got it all put together last night, and installed XP Pro. Everything seemed smooth and it was working like a charm.
It installed XP SP3 and then I went to bed. This morning, I turn it on and all is well at first. It boots up and then I suppose finished installing SP3 (as I just shut it down last night, didn't actually reboot.) Then, the problems started happening.
I was setup to connect to this computer via remote desktop, as it was to be a web server, I didn't want to get a monitor for it. After the reboot, I was never able to reconnect via remote desktop. The HDD light was solid and when I went into my router to attached devices, it was not listed. So, I hoooked the VGA cable to it to try to see what was going on and I got no display. My monitor said no input detected. Okay, so I hit the reset and the "windows did not start properly....blah blah" screen came up and it froze on the countdown. So, I was forced to reset again. This time I was able to tell it to start windows normally. It booted into Windows and just when it seemed everything was fine, it suddenly restarted with no warning. It boots into Windows again and windows tells me it recovered from a problem with the RAM. It then froze with lines accross the screen, as if the video (integrated) was malfunctioning. On reboot, the mobo did several tests and it said the RAM was perfectly okay, as well as everything else. It boots into Windows again and once again, it freezes with lines.
So, I think perhaps, slim chance, but perhaps the SP3 update was screwed up, so I pop the CD in the drive and reboot. This time, it does nothing. It just sits there, no BIOS screen or anything. So, I reset again. It then tells me the CMOS checksum is bad and some options. However, it is once again frozen so I can't select anything. Once again, reset. This time I tell it to load default values. Of course, the default (for some reason) puts the HDD in front of the CD drive in boot order, so it boots into Windows again, and freezes again.
I reboot, change the boot order, and boot to the XP CD. It then froze twice on installation, once while formatting the partition, and then as soon as it got to the first screen after loading all the files.
Sorry that is so long. Does anyone have any ideas for anything else it could be other than a faulty mobo??????
Specs:
MSI G31M3-F V2 mobo
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140
1 GB (2x512) Micron DDR2 667
40 GB EIDE HDD
Some cheap offbrand CD-RW
Thank you!!!
