Mainboard is fried, what do I do?

[nutstae]

hi guys,

good day to all.

Everytime I try to turn on the computer,

it won't boot up no matter what.

all I hear is just CD-rom running, nothing shows on the screen.

I went to the tech and told me mainboard is gone.

so I just wanted to get few things verified by you guys about what he said

1.he said since it is pentium 4 , that I would have to buy used one to replace it.
and I cannot get just brand new one to replace because some parts do not match, so I have to get
the same one as what I had.

2.he also told me if I get the used board to fix my computer, i won't be able to
get my stuff in hard drive back,only pictures and documents are to be restored, because chipset will be changed.

are these true??

so no matter what, the only options i have are

1.get used board, but won't be able to get your stuff back

2.buy new computer, and won't be able to get your stuff back.


really? this sux...can you guys advise me please

 

[bobalazs]

Umm, it would help to know, how did you kill it? And just because it doesn't give picture doesn't automatically mean, that the mainboard is killed. Could be 10 reasons i could list here, but since i don't know any specifics...
Your "techie" was wrong, if the hdd is working, everything on it is salvageable.

 

[pjmelect]

Pentium 4 motherboards are easy to obtain, however the operating system would then not work due to the different chipset, but by phoning Microsoft to explain the situation they should give you a new serial number. Your data should be fine if the repair is carried out by a competent technician that has been told to save your data. If I were doing this job I would charge around £60 or about $100 so you will have to consider if the repair was worthwhile considering that the computer is only a Pentium 4.

 

[capt_taco]

"Dead motherboard" is the go-to excuse for just about any computer repair person who doesn't know what the hell is wrong with your machine from basic tests. We'd have to know more about what exactly is going wrong and how the machine died to give you a better idea, but something like this could be anything from a video card to a CPU to a hard drive to a power supply going bad (or yes, possibly a motherboard as well).

In the meantime, if the board IS dead, yes, everything he said is mostly true. They do not really make Socket 478 (Pentium 4) motherboards anymore, so used is probably your only option. The only one I've heard of that's still made is by Biostar (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138174) but it uses DDR2, not the regular DDR that was the standard for most Pentium 4 systems ... which means you'll probably need to replace your RAM in order to use it.

Also, if you replace your motherboard, you are going to have to reinstall Windows or the system probably will not work due to driver conflicts caused by all the drivers from the old motherboard still being there. This is not something that can be untangled; it's just a crappy reality of life when you replace the motherboard. But as mentioned above, you can probably save everything off the hard drive by cloning it if the hard drive itself was not the bad component. If you can find the EXACT SAME motherboard, though, you might be able to just plug everything back in and not run into that problem. I would seriously look into that as an option if it really is the motherboard that died.

 

[jsc]

The problem could just as easily be the PSU.

Our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-posting-boot-problems