bad motherboard?

Hello.
How can I tell if my motherboard is bad? My computer reboots itself, or will just freeze up. I have a newer computer now, but I would like to get the older one going again. Also... when I hit the power button to turn it on , it wont turn on.. I have to hold it for several seconds.
any help? any questions you may have for me?

 

Welcome aboard, can you at least give us a make and model# please? How old is the thing, can you boot into safe mode?

If you haven't yet, make sure auto-boot is turned off so that you can see a BSOD. Which OS do you have?

 

thanks for a reply... good point.. you do need more info
the motherboard is a AK79D-400VN from AOPEN, it has a barton 3000+, max ram. winxp pro, 256 gerforce ddr3 video. Im going unhook this computer and hook up my old one, and see if i can get into the bios and turn off auto-boot, and see what comes up. If I remember right, it was a BSOD with a code line with letters and numbers.

 

Yup, tag line up top and 0x....xxx on the bottom. BTW, auto-reboot should be in your XP options. It's not a BIOS thing IIRC.:confused

 

I could be wrong but i think BSOD's with lots of numbers refer to RAM instability.

If someone could confirm then it may be time to test with memtest.

 

well hooked it up.. it will not turn on no matter what i do. I held the on button for 2 mins. looked inside everything is hooked up still, checked all connections, even unpluged the power cable to the powerpack, then pushed on button again to drain all power. the LED standby is on still, not sure if that means anything or not. i tried everything , this includes hitting the machine .

 

It could be just your power supply that gave it up. If you happen to have a good PSU laying about then give it a shot. I wouldn't spend any money on it.

 

I had the same problem develop on my 2nd PC last week (happy new year, bleh).... pushed on switch, power light came on, but nothing happened (no boot, beep etc).

Got a power supply from an old PC and hooked that up to test it out, and it booted... Could definitely be worth trying to hook up a spare PSU as augiedoggie suggested, maybe a friend has an old crappy PC lying around you can pillage? - or just borrow the one from your other machine! - and see what happens.

 

Might be the PSU or perhaps a capacitor is leaking on the motherboard.

 

I haven't found a solution yet, but the issues in your OP sound a lot like what's happening to my comp described over here.

I'm not having any problems starting it yet, and I haven't had any BSOD's, it always starts for me, just reboots randomly or freezes.