So, I think my motherboard died....

Before going out of town for business last week I shut down my gaming system. I didn't want it running unattended for the 5 days I'd be gone. Returning home from the trip I went to power the system up. It sort of started, then rebooted a few times before not powering up at all. I checked all the connections inside and everything was fine and tried starting it back up; this time it did for a bit.

Everything was fine until I tried running the game. The computer again rebooted a few times, before not powering back on. Opening up the computer again, I pulled all the power connections, ram and daughter cards and re-seated everything. Lo and behold, it started up again just fine, even to the point I could run the game. I logged in a few characters, responded to a few tells and proceeded to shut down the game. When the game closed the computer again rebooted itself a few more times, and again, wouldn't power on.

Now I was thinking it was possible that my power supply was going bad. I replaced the 400w supply with a beefier 500w Antec Earth Watts. Unfortunately I've come up with similar results. The system would boot up and run for a bit, then would reboot wanting to go into Windows Safe Mode, or go to a previous config. I tried both with mixed results, but the computer never would properly get back into Windows (Vista). Right now the system won't turn on. When I hit the power button the CPU fan shifts like it's received a little bit spike of voltage, but the rest of the system doesn't respond at all. It could be a flaky power switch, but there are other reasons why I think it might be the motherboard.

The computer I have is a Gateway FX7026 system that's been pretty serviceable as a gaming system since I bought it. (the only upgrade has been the new PSU I mentioned) I'd removed the factory OC on the graphics card using Riva Tuner a few years ago as the newer drivers created instability while playing the game. Removing the OC made things stable.

There have been a few issues over the last few months that lead me to believe it's the motherboard being the problem. I use a KVM switch between my laptop and desktop and a few months ago I noticed that the USB on the desktop wouldn't find the keyboard and mouse anymore when switching back to the desktop. (Power settings hadn't been changed ) Placing an older Wacom tablet into one of the USB ports as a dummy load seemed to resolve the issue. I also realized a couple of weeks ago that the computer was no longer seeing the second hard drive. I hadn't had a chance to look into that before I went out of town.

So, does this sound like a MoBo issue, or am I missing something else? Thanks for your feedback and assistance.

if you've replaced the power supply and still get the same behavior, it likely is going to be the motherboard.

Yeah, it sounds like the motherboard. You might want to test your memory anyway (I've been seeing a lot of weird things happen at work this month due to bad RAM), but it sounds like the mobo.

www.memtest.org

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Well, if I can actually get the system to turn back on I'll give the memtest a try.

I've had similar problems twice in the past... once it was a bad motherboard, the other time it was a bad stick of RAM. I'd suggest making a Memtest boot CD (or flash drive if your machine supports booting from one) and running it overnight. If you get memory errors, try one stick of RAM at a time and see if they stop and the system is stable. If you don't get any errors, it's probably the motherboard. And if Memtest crashes or won't run, it's almost certainly the motherboard...

better idea. take out one stick of ram and try it. if it doesn't work, take ou that one and stick in the other. if it still doesn't work, safe bet that it is the motehr board.

Sounds like the motherboard to me also, particularly with the other symptoms that preceeded the current problem.

I had a similar problem (but without the other issues leading up to it) and checked everything I could easily check (PSU, RAM, etc) and concluded it was the motherboard. So, I replaced it and found the problem was NOT the motherboard. The point of this story is: when I was shopping for a new motherboard, I made sure to get one with good onboard diagnostics. After I installed the new mobo, it was able to tell me that the problem was the CPU. I had apparently burnt it out. I guess running at 100% load 24/7 for 3 years with the stock cooler can do that.

Anyway, every system I've built since then, I pay attention to the diagnostic capabilities of the motherboard. I've never needed them, but I'm sure I will some day.

(I also install better heatsinks on the CPU. My current system has a Zalman HSF thats about 6" tall and weighs over 1-1/2 lbs.)

Another possibility is a thermal shutdown of the CPU. Perhaps the thermal paste debonded.

Maybe a creepy crawly got behind the motherboard and case and is shorting something out?

Yea I'm grasping straws here.

Edit: The good news it looks like it uses a standard microATX motherboard. This should work as a reasonable replacement with the exception of a single old style keyboard/mouse port instead of two. The only unknowns are the cabling to the case (power, reset, front ports, etc) and replacing the IO plate for the new motherboard but it should be straight forward.

Yes there isn't really a lot of options at NewEgg once you filter for microATX, Socket 775, 4 DDR2 slots and 8 or more audio channels (basing the criteria on your current motherboard).

If you stick to the last generation of chipset for Socket 775 from Intel that gives you a choice between a G41 and a G43 and the primary difference there is the G43 supports 16GB instead of just 8GB.

I've got a crazy suggestion. I've had almost this exact same problem happen twice. Once back when my PC was young and once more recently. BOTH times it's had to do with the power switch.

1st time the motherboard end of the power switch leads weren't seated just right. Every so often the connection would short and the computer would reboot it's self. Sometimes it would do this over and over (I eventually realized the cycle between reboots was roughly 8 seconds, or just long enough for a hard reboot by holding in the power switch). I tapped the plug firmly onto it's prongs on the board and all was well for years.

2nd time was more recently. Long story short the actual case switch had gone bad (9yr old case) and was shorting its self.

To summarize, play around with the power switch and where it plugs into the motherboard. It's a long shot, but a new case/switch is a hell of a lot cheaper than a motherboard.

Hadn't found anything behind the Motherboard that might have shorted things out.

No Molex or any other other things shorting out to case that I could see/find.

Pulled all the unnecessary connections and the daughter cards and still nothing. Even disconnected all but the power cord to insure no peripheral was causing an issue.

No smell of pc board burning, and I'm familiar with that "aroma". Fortunately that's never been one of my computers.

Thanks for throwing out more ideas. Much appreciated.

Thought my Died to, but it turn out to be my power Supply, make sure have someone look at it.

As I mentioned in the OP, I had already switched out the Power supply for a newer, more robust supply. I had been planning on making that upgrade anyway, but not this soon.

Last summer, I had the exact same symptoms happen to me, as well as others. For example, my motherboard stopped detecting anything inserted into my PCI-E slot.

So here's another vote for it being your motherboard.

Thanks once again for everyone's input on this.

The new motherboard arrived a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't get the original Hard Drive to boot up into Windows.

I loaded up the windows recovery software off the other partition, and was in the midst of that when the power cable got knocked loose, screwing things up more.

I downloaded the recovery DVD from Microsoft, but with what had already happened with the first round of recovery software, the HD no longer showed a valid Windows installation and the software couldn't do anything. Great. I ended up ordering the full recovery/reinstallation disk from the OEM (Gateway), and purchased a new Seagate 500gb drive so that I wouldn't lose any/more data off of the original drive.

Double checking the new motherboard to insure that it was good, I grabbed the HD out of my wife's computer (AMD3 system), and plopped it in my computer(Intel Core2Quad). It worked perfectly. Throwing it back into her system gave me the delightful BSOD. Fortunately I could get it back into Win safe mode. Doing a bit of research it turned out that my new motherboard had created a reg change on her HD that would cause Windows to lock up if it didn't see an Intel processor. Gee, thanks Intel.

Once the OEM Windows installation software showed up, I got the system up and running with the new hard drive. The original drive was seen, but showed up as needing to be formatted. After trying a few data recovery trial software packages that I found via zdnet/cnet, I was able to get nearly all my original data back. It didn't cost me the $1/gb one of them wanted to charge. As for my original back up/secondary drive, the system isn't seeing that at all, so it's going to become a paperweight/door stop, or just get recycled. Not sure what I'm going to do with the original main drive yet.

In the end it's possible that it wasn't my original MoBo that was dying but the original HD, even though it showed no errors when "chdsk'ed" on my wife's system. But for now, I have a few newer components that will hopefully keep the system running longer.

At least the upgrade that I'd done to my wife's system before I jumped into fixing mine went perfect.