I think this OLD system is dead...what ya think?

[Motero]

I'm attempting to fix a computer for a friend. It's an old 486 DX 4 120. Last time I had it, I reinstalled Windows and it was working fine. She took it home that night and turned it on and got registry errors and couldn't do a thing. I noticed, though, when I was reloading Windows 95 on her computer, the cdrom wouldn't read the cd some times and the hard drive didn't sound too good. I told her that she may need a new one of each soon.
So I took the computer back and tried to format and reinstall last night. While trying to partition the hd and put only 1 primary partition on it, it showed up as 3 primary dos partitions and 1 extended partition. I tried it again after I removed all those partitions and it came up the same result. Formatting the hard drive would fail around 99% completed.

I restarted the computer and and it showed the memory count and then would stop. The hd is not detected anymore in the BIOS at all. I tried a new hard drive and it didn't work. I tried a new IDE cable and it didn't work. I tried a new IDE adapter card on the motherboard and it still didn't work. I reset the defaults in bios, and still didn't work. I came to a conclusion that it's her mobo and I can't replace that.

What do you guys think? Any way to save this?

 

[Motero]

^

 

[Motero]

Need help here guys! Please!

 

[Killbat]

Is it really worth it? Well, in my suspicious list are a defective IDE host or defective power supply.

 

[Motero]

I don't think it's worth it, but she really doesn't want to buy another one...unless she has to. I told her it's a goner and she said she'd look into getting one after the holidays...still wants me to try to fix it.

 

[Archknight]

Help her by stop frustrate yourselves, she really needs a new one, maybe not new but at least something better.

 

[Bleep]

If you want a MB for this machine here is a place where you might get one. They also have some really cheap systems.
LINK

Bleep