How do you tell if your motherboard is going out?

[Kosmo]

How does one know if their motherboard is going out?

Thanks,
GK

[DavidX]

It puts its hat and coat on. (Sorry)

[kwai]

i don't know if you can pin it down that easy. the only mbs i've seen fail (old 486 mbs) did so in parts. one's keyboard port went, but the rest was fine. another's wouldn't hold a bios even with a replacement battery. the rest we couldn't pin down the exact cause of death.

[JP]

David beat me to it. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
-JP
http://members.xoom.com/PSComputers

[DavidX]

To be honest Kosmo, it's a strange way to phrase your question. You seem to be assuming the cause without examining the symptoms. If you FIRST tell us the precise signs that lead you to suspect your mobo is failing, we might be better able to help.

[Kosmo]

Computer is constantly freezing up and having to be rebooted. Same thing happens in programs all of the time. Also the screen will turn green for no reason and say page default error.

GK

[Susan]

A Page is a section of memory that is accessible at one time. A page fault is when the computer needs to access an area of memory that has been swapped out to disk. (Virtual).

When you are getting an error, it is when your computer attempts to access virtual memory on the hard drive. Is your drive real full?

[DavidX]

I agree with Susan. It certainly sounds like the problem could be a full hard drive (and perhaps coupled with too little physical memory). Could explain why you thought your mobo may be failing; everything worked fine until recently, i.e. until you inadvertently filled your hard drive.

[Kosmo]

I might add this hard drive is a new one that was replaced a quantum fireball that went out. The new one is a Maxtor and I've had nothing but trouble since it's been put in. It's an 8.4 gig hard drive partitioned into c,d,e,f drives. Drive c has 723 megs free
Drive d has 1.99 megs free
Drive e has 1.99 megs free
Drive f has 1.81 megs free

GK

[Susan]

Maybe your quantum didn't really fail?? Can you post your system hardware? Memory, MB, OS...

[mayong]

This may be a funny answer but I used to have a similar situation. I found out that my cpu fan would stop occasionally. Hope this helps.

[Kosmo]

I have a Gateway 200 Pentium Pro with an 8.4 gig maxtor drive, STB Virge 4mb video, 128 ram, Esoniqu sound card, 56.6 us robotics, Mitsumi cd-rom and a hewlett packard cdr running on win 95.


GK

[Isos]

Kosmo
You have drives d-f full, less than 2 megs free. Where is your swap/Windows located?

[Kosmo]

huh? drive d and f are practically empty. Drive d is using 64k of 1.99 gig. And drive f is using 10.5 gig with 1.81 gig free. It's partitioned into 4 parts. How do you know where the swap window is?

GK

[DavidX]

Kosmo
Why the 'huh'? If you read your own post about five posts up, you'll see why Isos naturally assumed your drives were full. You stated:
>Drive d has 1.99 megs free
Drive e has 1.99 megs free
Drive f has 1.81 megs free<
The error is yours, not Isos. There's a big difference between a 'meg' and a 'gig'.

Now you have given the correct information, it would seem that we can rule out lack of hard drive space as your problem and it no longer matters where your swap file is located. Even the 723Mb left on Drive C is more than ample for a swap file.

I note that you have made a fresh post under 'Problems with Gateway Computers' in the General Discussion board and hope you find your solution there.

[This message has been edited by DavidX (edited 03-26-99).]

[This message has been edited by DavidX (edited 03-26-99).]

[Kosmo]

Huh? is a mere question nothing more as you appear to be making it out to be. I didnt realize that I had made an error.



GK

[Dash]

Ok i also have a problem, and unlike him i think ill chance it and post my specs http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.

I just bought a new DFI P5BV3+ rev.B motherboard
AMD k6-2 300 100mhz FSB New
PC100 64meg DIMM NEW

So i got home and plugged them all in, it worked, then the computer froze up, so i reset it. and the screen showed a screwed up windows screen almost, it had wrong colors and wrong sizes, but thats what it looked like (sorry cant describe it better.) So i tried a few more times with same results. Then i let it sit for 20 minutes, turned it on, and nothing happened
err My CPU Fan and Powersupply Fans turned on, my HD and CD and Floppy all turned on.. But nothing appeared on screen. I only have a dimaond viper v330 8meg pci plugged into MB, nothing else except for power cables, ive tried moving the video card but it doesnt help

Any tips would be appreciated, thanks.