Trouble in paradise

[PP Mguire]

K so as ive posted about my gfs living room machine before w/ a problem i have yet a bigger problem. Alright this weekend i went over there w/ my AGP 9800XT and 2gig of DC ram (4x512mb). The mobo has 4 slots for up to 4gig of DC ram supposedly. Well before i fixed it the first time my gf was saying that it was starting to reboot randomly. Well the last time it did the HD crashed (or supposedly). Well i saved their information and re-installed XP onto it and got them up and running again. I installed my ram and installed COD2 in which i had that problem i posted about before. Well that night her brother said that the video wasnt coming up and XP wasnt loading. I checked it out and for me it poped right up no problem. The next morning i installed Halo and right as it finished and asked me if i wanted to play the computer restarted and then never came back up again. It would restart and the DVD-RW, DVD-Rom, and HD light would just flash at me. I tried resetting the bios and nothing, i tried putting their old ram in and nothing. I tried a PCI video card and nothing. I unplugged all the drives then tried those other steps again and nothing. I put the ram in my gfs computer and it worked fine. Still nothing on their other machine. Their warranty is out soo i wanna fix it or give them my internet machine to use until i can figure something out. Her mom is gonna take it to her company and have her companies tech look at it. Im pretty sure he will sit back and scratch his head like i did but if he dosent....well i dont wanna let that happen . Id rather have you guys tell me whats wrong instead of him fix it and her mom possibly say i dont want you touching our machine again:beard: So anybody have any ideas? Heres the specs again
Emachine T-series T-5026
LGA775 P4 3.06 w/ HT
Intel D915gag board (thats one of the #s i believe)
w/ Intel 915 Express chipset
2x256 PC3200 DC ram (or my 2gig)
INtegrated PCI-E graphics
160gig WD SATA HD
DVD-RW and DVD/CD-RW combo drive

Anybody??

 

[FlashDude]

psu or motherboard

 

[PP Mguire]

Pretty much thought it was the board but was trying to make sure. Anybody else? Is this guy her moms taking it to gonna scratch his head? Ive already got another computer in the process for them.

 

[jeremy]

check the mobo for bad capacitors and better use a flashlight cuz its kinda dark in there , see examples
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195
http://home.earthlink.net/~doniteli/index27.htm

try a hard cmos reset , unplug the power cord and get the battery out for 1 hour then put it back & plug the power cord & power up , and of course its important to put it back just as it was and not upside down

if theres bad capacitors then have em rma the mobo to intel it got 3yrs most likely still under warranty

if theres no bad capacitors & resetting the cmos didnt help , get a digital multimeter (their pretty cheap) measure the psu voltages with it and report back , see these guides
http://www.ochardware.com/articles/psuvolt/psuvolt.html
http://www.driverheaven.net/guides/testingPSU/
adjust the multimeter to 20 DCV (direct current voltage) , after youll report back with the voltages ill be able to determine if its the psu or mobo at fault

 

[PP Mguire]

Ok their machine is from Emachines which only has a 1 year warranty which is up. ITs only like 1.25 years old possibly so i can try and RMA the board to Intel but would they take an Emachines board? Also i took the board out and looked for blown capacitors or bulging ones under their flourecent light and couldnt see any. I also tried using my PSU (Ultra X-connect 550watt 24-pin) and it didnt work along w/ many different types of ram. When i take their machine home i will use my multimeter to check the votages on their PSU to see if it shorted and possibly shorted something on the board. The only thing i havent done is the CMOS reset. When i bring it home i will do that which should be tuesday. Even though i did try unplugging the PSU and i took the CMOS battery out but i couldnt remember which way it was supposed to be. I didnt realize it matter d though.

 

[jeremy]

as far as i know e-machine pcs dont use oem mobos , so they should take it , i guess that rules out the psu although its possible it was unstable and fried the mobo, its very important to put it back correctly it wont work otherwise and puting it incorrectly can fry the mobo in some cases, in most mobos it should be with the + facing up

edit when you tried your ultra psu , did you connect the 4 pin plug to the mobo?

 

[PP Mguire]

Ok i had my dad take a look at it and do some tests. He said the thing should be fine BUT there was something else wrong w/ the motherboard. Something about it coming apart from the inside or w/e idk i was to tired and couldnt understand him at the time. Also yes the + is facing up. I thought you meant like the + had to be like in a certain position but yea i already knew about that and i did have the 4 pin connnector plugged in as well. The only things i had on the mobo when i tried firing it up where the cpu, ram, 24pin connector, 4 pin connector and the front panel. Its still a no go so im guessing i gotta buy a new one.

 

[PP Mguire]

Oh yea, thanx Jeremy for helping me out.