Is my mother board shot?

[Jackruby45]

I currently have four 1/2 gig DDR2's occupying the four available DDR2 (667/533 MHz) slots. Total Ram = 2 Gig. I purchased two DDR2 667 (1 GB) cards. I removed 2 of the 1/2 GB DDR2's and replaced them with two of the 1 GB's. I did this in accordance with the instructions from the mother board manual. Basically (from left to right) 1/2, 1, 1/2, 1. I could not get the PC to boot. I tried many other configurations. Long story short. Slot #4 is the only slot that will recognize any of the the DDR2 memory. I put all my 1/2 GB DDR2's back in place... the PC only recognized the 1/2 GB in slot #4. I am now limping on 1 GB of ram in slot #4. At least I can boot up and run some applications. When I have all 4 DDR2's installed.... the led's on the memory will light up on start up. However, the lights in slot #4 all light while some random combination of led's light on the other three. Once booted... just slot #4 led's light, the others do not light at all.

I went into the Bois. It says that slots 1,2,&3 are not installed...but slot #4 is installed. The DDR2's are properly seated in their slots. The PC was unplugged every time I removed or inserted memory. I think I have a bad mother board.Perhaps it's shorted???

I went on Ebay to see if I could find a replacement board Intel D955BX, 82955X Memory Controller Hub. There were D955BX boards on Ebay. However, I'm not sure if they are an exact match. Secondly, I'm not sure I want to buy the same board.

If I were to upgrade to a better board and processor would I have to re-install my operating system (XP)? I would like to be able to use my existing peripherals (i.e. 8X DVD drives, Video Card, Sound Card) too.

Thanks

 

[oscaryu1]

Do all the sticks of memory work in Slot #4?

 

[Jackruby45]

Yes... all sticks work in slot #4. They will not work anywhere else.

I use this PC for video editing with Premiere Pro CS3. For the past 6 months the software has acted funny. Skiping video on playback, crashes due to low memory. I attributed this to woking with Hi-Def video.

With the 1 Gig stick Premiere pro is actually working normally. It's a bit slow... no more crashes and video skiping. I think my memory slots may have had issues for a while.

Can I replace my existing mother board with an exact model without having to reload my XP operating system?