PC dead - motherboard damaged?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mac
  • Start date Start date
M

Mac

My three year old Packard Bell iMedia PC has stopped working. When I power
it up half the time the power indicator lights up and then goes out. The
other half of the time it stays on but nothing happens - the BIOS screen
doesn't appear and no disk activity occurs, although there are some strange
sounds coming from what may be the disk A friend suggested that the
motherboard may be damaged.

Any other thoughts on this?

If the motherboard is the problem is it easy to replace? How expensive?
Would I be better off just buying a new PC?
 
Without examining the machine it's impossible to know exactly what the
problem is. Damaged motherboard is certainly a possibility. Damaged hard
disk or power supply, possibly. Or maybe just a loose wire. (I've been
accused of having a few loose screws, but I can still boot my computer.)

Best to have your computer examined by a technician (under warranty, if
possible.) Replacing a motherboard is like repairing a watch: If you know
how, it's easy.
 
Unless you have added any hardware to the PC recent, the motherboard being
damaged is a small possibility. The culprits might be bad memory or
dead/dying CPU. Take it into a PC repair centre so that they can look at
it.
 
Mac said:
My three year old Packard Bell iMedia PC has stopped working. When I power
it up half the time the power indicator lights up and then goes out. The
other half of the time it stays on but nothing happens - the BIOS screen
doesn't appear and no disk activity occurs, although there are some
strange
sounds coming from what may be the disk A friend suggested that the
motherboard may be damaged.

Any other thoughts on this?

If the motherboard is the problem is it easy to replace? How expensive?
Would I be better off just buying a new PC?
Click to expand...

It sounds like you do't have the knowledge to troubleshoot it yourself. Ted
Zieglar's suggestion of taking it to a shop may be in order.

If you want to try for yourself then to start with unplug everything that is
connected to the mother board except the power supply and video card. Remove
all cables to the hard drives, CDROM, floppy drive, including power cables.
Remove any extra cards like a modem, NIC, etc. Also unplug all external
devices except the keyboard. Make sure you know how to reinstall everything
before doing this. Once you have everything removed or unplugged, reattach
the power cord and turn on the computer. It will not boot to Windows but you
should get a display. If you consistantly get a display every time it is
powered on then the motherboard, CPU and video are probably good. Start
adding things back one at a time until the problem re-occurs. Make sure the
power is unplugged whenever adding or removing anything. If possible when
the problem re-occurs try switching the power supply with a known good one.

Kerry
 
Mac said:
My three year old Packard Bell iMedia PC has stopped working. When I power
it up half the time the power indicator lights up and then goes out. The
other half of the time it stays on but nothing happens - the BIOS screen
doesn't appear and no disk activity occurs, although there are some
strange
sounds coming from what may be the disk A friend suggested that the
motherboard may be damaged.

Any other thoughts on this?

If the motherboard is the problem is it easy to replace? How expensive?
Would I be better off just buying a new PC?
Click to expand...

Everyone else has covered the "what is it?" question, so I'll answer the
price question. If it is the motherboard and not something else, you're
going to need to get the replacement from the manufacturer, otherwise the
you're going to run into issues with your bios-locked restore CD that isn't
going to recognize a different motherboard. So, you'd end up buying a new
copy of XP, probably.

You might want to check the manufacturer to see if they even have
replacements after 3 years, and if so, if they'll sell it to you as a spare
part. Some of the companies will sell replacement parts, others require that
you send the whole computer to them for repair.

You might get lucky and find that it's something simpler and cheaper, but
it's not a bad idea to do a little research in advance to see what you might
have to pay if it is the motherboard.
 
Thanks for all the replies - will take it to a local repair shop to see what
they think - but I am tempted to buy a replacement which will be a much
better spec at (much) lower than original price - half price I guess.

I can then beef this replacement up by transferring the working ram, disk,
pci cards etc to it.

Sad to see it go but the old PC is probably not worth fixing
 
That might not be a bad idea, and the parts that you don't need duplicates
of, like the floppy or a slower CD drive will make fine spares for
troubleshooting.
 
Back
Top