L Hughes
December 26th 03, 10:22 PM
Motherboard going out?
I’ve been experiencing some strange symptoms in a computer
that is currently running Windows XP Home. I’m starting to
think that the problems started a few months back when I
was attempting to reinstall Windows 2000 Professional.
During this reinstall the hard drive would come up with a
damaged disk error after Windows would reformat the drive.
I used disk diagnostics and everything would check out
fine. I went through this several times. After becoming
frustrated I switched to a different drive and grabbed the
XP disk. Everything installed just fine. Never took the
time to determine if the problem was the disk drive or the
copy of Windows 2000.
Now for the current problems, an intermittent problem with
the ability to connect to the network and at times the
Internet. The problems started when a program used to
connect to a remote server was giving timed out errors.
This turned out to be a very intermittent problem. When I
would use the program it worked just fine. Also I was
being told that the computer would not connect to the
local server. This also turned out to be very intermittent
and seemed to connect whenever I tried. That all changed
today. Using the local server I was unable to connect to
this computer. All others were up and connecting just
fine. My first line of attack was to change out the NIC
card. This worked for a short time. I was able to connect
to the network and Internet. Then the network connection
went down but I was still able to connect to the Internet.
Then I lost the Internet connection as well. While this
was going on I kept checking the other computers on the
network and they were all connecting just fine. Next I
checked and switched out the cabling, no change. Switched
ports on the router, nothing. Checked the firewall,
nothing. Shut down the firewall and the firewall in XP
(which was never running in the first place), nothing.
Thought it has to be an XP thing and this is where things
started to get strange.
I decided that I would reformat the drive and install
Windows 2000. The drive that was being used in the
computer was undersized so I decided to attempt to use the
drive that I had had problems with during the first
reformat. A new copy of Windows 2000 was being used at
this time. Same errors as before, damaged disk. I put this
drive into a different computer and attempted to install
Windows. It took the operating system without a problem.
Put another drive into the problem computer and attempted
to install, no go again, damaged disk. Put the drive that
just took Windows back into the problem computer and
attempted another install, same problems as before.
To sum it all up, this computer is still sitting there
running XP. It wont let me install a new operating system,
connect to the network or Internet. The NIC card is the
only card in the computer. The motherboard has integrated
audio and video. There are no conflicts and everything
seems to be running just fine according to the Windows XP
hardware manager. The only thing that I can think to do is
move the NIC card to a different PCI slot and see if that
would give the same connection problems but that doesn’t
explain the operating system install problems. I would
think that if the motherboard was going bad on me I would
have more problems then this but…..?
Anybody have any ideas?
I’ve been experiencing some strange symptoms in a computer
that is currently running Windows XP Home. I’m starting to
think that the problems started a few months back when I
was attempting to reinstall Windows 2000 Professional.
During this reinstall the hard drive would come up with a
damaged disk error after Windows would reformat the drive.
I used disk diagnostics and everything would check out
fine. I went through this several times. After becoming
frustrated I switched to a different drive and grabbed the
XP disk. Everything installed just fine. Never took the
time to determine if the problem was the disk drive or the
copy of Windows 2000.
Now for the current problems, an intermittent problem with
the ability to connect to the network and at times the
Internet. The problems started when a program used to
connect to a remote server was giving timed out errors.
This turned out to be a very intermittent problem. When I
would use the program it worked just fine. Also I was
being told that the computer would not connect to the
local server. This also turned out to be very intermittent
and seemed to connect whenever I tried. That all changed
today. Using the local server I was unable to connect to
this computer. All others were up and connecting just
fine. My first line of attack was to change out the NIC
card. This worked for a short time. I was able to connect
to the network and Internet. Then the network connection
went down but I was still able to connect to the Internet.
Then I lost the Internet connection as well. While this
was going on I kept checking the other computers on the
network and they were all connecting just fine. Next I
checked and switched out the cabling, no change. Switched
ports on the router, nothing. Checked the firewall,
nothing. Shut down the firewall and the firewall in XP
(which was never running in the first place), nothing.
Thought it has to be an XP thing and this is where things
started to get strange.
I decided that I would reformat the drive and install
Windows 2000. The drive that was being used in the
computer was undersized so I decided to attempt to use the
drive that I had had problems with during the first
reformat. A new copy of Windows 2000 was being used at
this time. Same errors as before, damaged disk. I put this
drive into a different computer and attempted to install
Windows. It took the operating system without a problem.
Put another drive into the problem computer and attempted
to install, no go again, damaged disk. Put the drive that
just took Windows back into the problem computer and
attempted another install, same problems as before.
To sum it all up, this computer is still sitting there
running XP. It wont let me install a new operating system,
connect to the network or Internet. The NIC card is the
only card in the computer. The motherboard has integrated
audio and video. There are no conflicts and everything
seems to be running just fine according to the Windows XP
hardware manager. The only thing that I can think to do is
move the NIC card to a different PCI slot and see if that
would give the same connection problems but that doesn’t
explain the operating system install problems. I would
think that if the motherboard was going bad on me I would
have more problems then this but…..?
Anybody have any ideas?