Gigabyte motherboard replacement

[chim_knee]

Hi,

I think my father-in-law's motherboard is kaput. The PC powers up but NOTHING happens, no POST, no beeps etc. I have replaced the PSU but this hasn't fixed anything.

My next guess would be the motherboard (no boot sequence is performed what-so-ever).

He has a Gigabyte GA-8GEMT4 (REV 1.0) motherboard. It appears this is no longer on sale (not that I could find anyway).

Does anyone know what would be a cheap, acceptable alternative?

Additionally, if I were to just replace the motherboard - would it ruin his installation of windows (presumably WinXP has drivers etc for the motherboard as is - a new m/b will probably have different ones). Am I in for a sh1t_fight trying to get it to work or are the techniques to this?

Many thanks in advance!
Phil.

[thepassenger]

http://tinyurl.com/m2ku9

Yes it's fleabay, however it has roughly the same chipset (and comes with a processor... bonus!)so Windows XP shouldn't throw a complete and utter funk about stuff, although it might require you to revalidate.

I belive Windows XP should be pretty resiliant to a motherboard swap, however to be on the safe side it might be best to slave their harddrive to your desktop and pull off any relevant data before putting the new unit it.

[annodomini2]

What spec is the machine? You maybe able to get an equivalent.

XP should be ok, although it generally helps to reinstall.

[chim_knee]

annodomini2 said:

XP should be ok, although it generally helps to reinstall.

I was scared of that!

Spec - not sure, it's a P4 but I don't know what the processer is (f-i-l didn't know and I can't boot to find out, didn't particularly want to hook to processor out to find out).

I guess that the chipset is the important bit with regards XP? (makes sense)

[annodomini2]

Before you replace it, have you tried unplugging all additional components from the board, i.e. Hard drive, floppy, CD etc

And tried then?

Try booting with just Motherboard, CPU, RAM & Graphics, if that doesn't work, take out the graphics card and check for beeps.

Sounds like a short somewhere.

If it does work add them back in one at a time to source your problem, if not then I would go with motherboard.

[aldi]

A lot of gigabyte boards have three year factory warrantys, if you fill out the form on the gigabyte site it should tell you if it's in or not.

[smuttley]

I've swapped 'a lot' of different boards over the years, and have generally found XP is pretty happy with most swaps (i.e. the machine boots), but you may need to faff around with sound/video/usb drivers afterwards - easy these days as you either get them with the m/b or off of t'internet.

[stargate]

Hope you have fixed this by now but I have had a similiar problen on several PC's and it is one of the voltage rails failing in the power supply. You might want to check that first (only £10.00 for power supply) before pulling the PC apart.

Edited by stargate on Sunday 3rd September 21:27

[chim_knee]

stargate said:

Hope you have fixed this by now but I have had a similiar problen on several PC's and it is one of the voltage rails failing in the powere supply. Ypu might want to check that first (only £10.00 for power supply) before pulling the PC apart.

No I haven't as yet - bit lazy!

The first thing I did was replace the p/s as it seemed the most likely. Thanks though.