Is my motherboard dead? Symptoms inside..

[Shudder]

I have a feeling my trusty friend, the K7T Pro from MSI needs to be put to sleep.

Saturday when I came home the monitor had no signal, the optical mouse had no light, and I couldn't open up my CDRom drives.

I turned it off and on and nope, nothing happened. The disk drives didn't spin up and I still couldn't open the cdroms.

I tried replacing various things and nothing worked.. put it back together and it magically was ok again.. till Sunday.

Happened again but I can't revive it. I tried a different processor, RAM, video card.. none of them helped. Here's why I think it's the motherboard, more specifically, the North bridge Chip.

CDROMS and Disk drives - Do not spin up/power up on boot. HOWEVER, if I unplug the cable from the MB they power up just fine.. but of course they're useless. I doubt it's the cables themselves because I find it unlikely that BOTH ide cables I have would go bad at the same time.

And I doubt it's the IDE ports because I get NO output to the screen. Which makes me think again it's the northbridge because it probably doesn't care that there's a processor there. Or memory.

USB things don't seem to have any power.

South Bridge things, such as my ethernet cards, they seem to be getting power just fine.

I also don't think it's a power problem because the CPU fan gets its power from the MB so the MB IS getting power.

THe LED lights with the MSI boards are all in an "Everything's ok" configuration which leads me to believe it's a damn useless feature.

I already ordered a mothboard, so if it's the problem I guess I'll be ok (for a fee ) If it's not, I can always build another

Question is, can I send this back to MSI and have them fix it? I never do anything outside normal use.. I don't OC the FSB or CPU or anything, so I didn't put any undue stress on the chips. The heat sink looks a tad discoloured for the NB chip too, so that's what makes me think it fried itself.

Thanks a lot

 

[TripleJ]

That sounds as sick as a dog.(No offence to dogs)

How old is the mobo? Obviously less than half a year I suppose? I'd say it'd be worth a shot trying to get them to fix it or even replace it. MSI are a pretty good company in that department I've heard.

 

[Shudder]

Hmm.. about a year? I got the KT133 probably after a month or two that it came out.. so it definitely can't be that old.

 

[OhioDude]

Just a thought... Don't discount the power supply. If you've got another one, I'd strongly suggest trying it.

I had a server that would not even post, no beep codes, nothing, but all fans spun normally and the RIMMS power LED on the MB also lit so everything looked normal power-wise. I replaced virtually EVERYTHING besides the PS. MB, CPU, memory, video... It turned out to be the power supply.

 

[Shudder]

I thought it may have been the PS, possibly, but dammit I got a good one

If it is a power supply problem, and I did buy a new MB, It's not a total loss.

First of all, I upgraded from a kt133 to a kt133a. Not bad.

Secondly, I convinced my roommate I could build him one cheaply since I have a bunch of parts still (voodoo 3, duron 650..) A kt133 board would be perfect and so it wouldn't be a total loss.

If it IS a PS problem, anyone know of a decent one I can pick up at a local computer store that won't cost a fortune? I'm talking about less than 50, hopefully in the 30-40 range at most.

In a way I hope it's a MB problem for the sake of convenience

 

[mcarag]

I'm bumping this up in hopes that the power supply solved the problem.

I think I might have a similar problem. I didn't go to as many lengths to determine what exactly was at fault; though, I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard. It seems to power on; the fans turn on, and even the CDROM starts spinning, but there's no beeping, and the monitor doesn't come on. At first I thought it might be the video card, but after trying it with two different video cards without success, I ruled that out.

The motherboard is an FIC AZ11 (the original) with a Duron 700 (non-oc'ed) on top. Everything had been used before; I gave these parts to a friend to use, since I had upgraded my own PC earlier this month. The power supply could be at fault, since the case was the only thing really different that was added to the mix that we hadn't tried before. However, it is a new case and power supply.

So did a new power supply help out at all?

 

[nicowju]

If the mobo is dead, MSI was pretty good with my RMA. However, they are slow. But you will get a new board back (i did, anyway )

 

[Shudder]

Hmm.. update time.

A new power supply did nothing, and it WAS the motherboard. So I was write.. whoo (a hundred dollar whooo )

MSI's phone support sucks though. I was on hold for 30 minutes before I just gave up. Plus I was on my celly and my ear was burning

I hope I can get a new board from them.. if you got one that's good news, I could use another and sell it to a friend.. yay.