Mother board or 'chip' failure?

Hi, i have a ebox pc fitted with a Soyo dragonplus K7V motherboard and AMD 'chip'. Something drastic has happened, and It has lost its BIOS and all contact with the monitor. The board lights up, the fans run, but there is no bleep or further 'action'. Could anyone tell me if the problem is likely to be caused by the motherboard, or the 'chip' please?

Thanks very much,

John.

 

I cant tell you for certain, but there are some things that you can do to check.

First, power off and unplug the computer from the wall. Open the case and reseat (take out and put back in) the RAM (memory sticks), Video card (if applicable) and any other add in cards. This is also a good time to clean out any dust.

while its still open, the very important part is to clear the BIOS. To do this, take the battery out of the motherboard, and look for the BIOS jumper. It should be enar the battery, and be a little plastic housing covering 2 of 3 pins (pins 1&2 by default). You'll want to move it to pins 3&4 for about a minute, then move it back to 1&2 and put the battery back in.

Now you're ready to power on and see if maybe the BIOS just got messed up.

Let us know what happens after that (and for reference, the "chip" is the CPU or Processor)

 

sounds like when my motherboard died. i had lights and fans but no hard drive spin-up and no POST. sounds like you're in the same boat unfortunately. however, do what InYearsToCome said, it will rule out any other possible hardware failure. Also, try booting with just one stick of ram if you have more than one

 

Thanks very much. Have tried In years to comes suggestions, but still no good. Can you please tell me if i can just replace the motherboard and processor, and if so, can I repce it with something different rather than the soyo K7V Dragon Plus and AMD Athlon CPU?

I have been watching other motherboards on Ebay with Athlon processors and wondered if these would work in my machine.

Sincere thanks once again for all you help,


John.

 

K7 huh?
Before you replace the motherboard, check the battery. It should read at least 3 volts.

If the battery is OK look at the capacitor cans on the motherboard for signs of swelling/leaking.

www.badcaps.net

If the motherboard compomnents show no obvious signs of deterioration, see if you can substitute the graphics board then the processor.

The motherboard is the least likely component to fail; the processor is the second least likely.

As both these are the most expensive fixes it is worth checking everthing else first. You can often get a small independant pc retailer to check components in the hope of selling a replacement.

 

Thanks very much. Sorry to be a nuicance, but I must ask for step by step guidance on how to go about these things, as I am clueless when it comes to computers. Sorry.