BleepingComputer.com: Possible Problems With Motherboard Want To Get Second Opinion

I am working on a gateway GT4010 for a friend. She says that right before it went out she got the blue screen with the codes but did not know to write them down. After she turned it off she could not get it to come back on.

The following happens when you turn the computer on:
power supply fan: on
Cpu fan: on
Hard drive: Power
Monitor: Power with solid green light but nothing on screen have tried with another monitor known to be good and get the same reaction. Try their monitor on another computer works fine.

There are no lights that I can find on the motherboard.

There are no beeps to be heard but I'm not sure if it has onboard sound Have tried pluggin in speakers but still hear no beeps.

Keyboard lights PS/2 do not come on at all at any point


Things I have done:

Removed and replaced CMOS battery
Removed memory and tried one stick at a time
Reset CMOS
Hard drive is in this computer at this time no virus no spyware.... to clean if you ask me
I did get a strange message.. at least strange to me when I tried to run chkdsk on it as a secondary drive :Errors Found. Chkdsk can not continue in read only mode.. am trying chkdsk/f at this time.
Have checked power supply with Volt meter everything checks fine

Questions:

Should a PS/2 keyboard light up when computer powers up even if hard drive is bad or absent?

Even if hard drive is bad shouldn't I get something on the screen saying bad hard drive or no system found or something?

I don't want to ask my friend order a new motherboard and not have tried everything else first.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.


Specs on computer

FIC KTBC51G Motherboard [Part #105553]
300-Watt Power Supply

Hi .

Rather than run chkdsk /f, please run chkdsk /r (which includes the /f functions).

http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-...chkdsk-r-f.html

The chkdsk command (from the RC) with no switch (e.g., /r) results in it being a read-only operation, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491051.aspx

My experience is that the keyboard should power up, just as any/all fans should power up...regardless of hard drive status.

The problem is that you are not getting any video signal, so you cannot expect error messages if you don't even get the POST.

Of course...the first thing to do is check all connections, starting with the motherboard and the panel connectors.

No POST - No Video - http://support.gateway.com/s/Checklists/BP...007050376.shtml

Louis

This post has been edited by hamluis: 09 September 2008 - 10:29 AM

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The internal speaker plugs into the motherboard.

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Is it possible to get your hands on a cheap PCI-E video card? It has the slot for one.

Could be a dead CPU, due to overheating. How clean are the insides?

Insides are clean. There is just a little dust on the front cover vent but hardly any on the back side or inside.

Have already tried another video card got the same response. Green light is solid but nothing on screen.

Have seen a post somewhere online about this mother board being especially bad for the video connection. Guy said he took mother board out and bent it just enough to hear something then reset the cmos and put a new video card in and it worked. I don't think I"m going to try bending the motheboard even if it is dead.


Ok so now that I see there is an internal speaker on the mother board I am definately not getting any beep codes at all.


Thanks for all the replies so far.

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The solder traces are awfully thin, especially on a multilayer board
With all of the tests you've done, if you have everything back together minus just the CPU. If you turn it on and it remains on, chances are it's the CPU

Agreed with all of the above. A motherboard should post in any condition and provide the diagnostic beep for the faulty component. A non posting motherboard IME (In My Experience) means a bad one. One tip I can give to anyone working on computers for friends (depending on how close they are) is to charge a minimal diagnostic charge to cover restocking fee's in case your wrong (shhh its a trade secret). To start try and get the board to beep naked then add components until something goes awry. And a tip that I just learned by researching my answer is never trust that anything is good. Test the power supply
( you did that ) test the speaker ( A Voltmeeter on the continuity test should work) If both check out you should get a beep code stating what component failed the POST test. No Beep bad motherboard. And lastly alot of new motherboards come with tiny speakers that are great to hang onto for testing purposes.

Thanks for all the help. I really needed the input before I went and got a new mother board. Which is what I did and wanted to let everyone know what happend and some other things that went wrong so others might find some of it useful because it took a lot of searching for some of it.


Got the new mother board and took the parts out of the old computer to move them over.. had to get a new case because the old one was left mounting not right mounting. Started to slip mother board in and realized.. hey.. the ports don't match up to the holes... I was very upset because I had got the case and the motherboard from the same place requesting that they match. well after I calmed down.. (btw this is only the second computer I have ever built from scratch) I realized there was another port hole cover in the box with the motherboard How considerate of them. after I figured out how to install it things went better.. only had to take the mother board back out 2 times to get the spacers in the right place. Then wonders of wonders I realized that the heatsink and fan from the old motherboard.. about 6 inches in width or bigger would not fit the new mother board... back to the computer store for one that would.. did not want to snap in place just right but it finally did.. just took a bit of finesse. Hooked up all the cables.. They really do need to do something better on all those single wire connectors for people like me who have fat fingers and bad eyesite.... put in the memory and everything booted it up .. everything running but nothing on the monitor back to square one *sigh* ... ok here is the long and short of it.. there are 4 memory slots.. A1 A2 B1 and B2... it seems that some genius decided that on this motherboard that if you only put one stick of memory in it has to go in B1 not A1. who would have thunk it... Anyhow after reading and rereading the manual I got it in the right slot and up comes the computer... wahhooooo.. or not.. Something I don't remember the exact message about USB cables being over limit? I researched this for about an hour or two and most places said a shorted cable... I took all cables out.. reset CMOS switched the jumpers around.. again with fat fingers I need to get me one of those chip pullers.... anyhow finally I found out what was causing it.. and I had seen this as a sollution but figured I knew that could not be it surely.. turned one screw on the motherboard about a quarter turn.. put the power cable back on turned it on and life shot back in That's all it was the motherboard was apparently to tight and was shorting out.. got everything back in and working.

Only question I still have is this.. when the computer came back up it said that Windows had to be checked for authenticity... I called in the number that was on it and it said it was an unauthrized copy??? The people had been using the computer... I entered the serial from the lable on the side and it gave me another number and i called it in and it worked. My question is this.. when a computer has been down for this long and a new motherboard and everything installed is it possible that windows gets de-authorized or confused about it? Or is it possible they had just been using an unauthroized version?

Thanks again for all the help.. Hope that my long drawn out explanation helps someone in the future

You're allow only so many hardware changes, then M$ will think you have installed it on another machine illegally and you must call and verify.
The screw and shorting might come back to haunt you. When installing you have to make sure the solder traces do not ground against the mounting plate or anything else. Sometimes they even supply fiber insulated washers to put between the stand-offs and the board.

You also have to watch which holes on the circuit board you use. Generally speaking the mounting holes have a tin/lead plated ring around the hole. This is part of the ground plane and is meant to ground the board. The trouble comes when you use a hole that is plain. It might not be touching anything on top but could be grounding out underneath

Thanks for posting your solutions and your process. It will help us and other users in the future.

Sneakycyber, on Sep 9 2008, 09:47 PM, said:

A motherboard will fail to post if the CPU id dead or if there the video card isnt seated properly.

The mother board will POST but it will fail the post test and give you a beep code or a light code on a break out board.

Edit: Will do further research on this subject. To err is human and I am no different.

This post has been edited by Sneakycyber: 28 September 2008 - 10:02 AM

Upon further research and collaboration with other advisors this is what I learned the CPU can cause the motherboard to not post properly so cryptodan you were correct. As Platypus mentioned in our discussion "I don't think there's a single will/won't answer to this. The board has to be able to self-test in order to give an indication. If something stops the test from running at all (like in this one, a short in a section of the board that doesn't shut the PSU down, or that maybe stops a bus from carrying data) then the board can't POST. But if the test can run, and ID a faulty component, then the beep code can be generated, as long as that fault doesn't stop the beep!"

In all honesty, this is the time to think about an upgrade if you want a faster machine.

To OP:

But...doesn't it feel great when it all (finally) comes together ?

Your post reminded me of various circumstances that many of us have encountered...I, for one, don't know why the control panel connections cannot simply be standardized in one plug or connection configuration...on second thought, I think it's that way to force users like me to actually read the motherboard manual, rather than immediately toss it into a corner.

Happy computing .

Louis