Oops! bye-bye Mobo - help needed

[brucet]

To the community (I think Crashman's help will be needed here...) - someone near and dear to me unknowingly thought it would be okay to unhook the parallel printer cable from the **on** desktop computer in our home and the **on** printer for a little laptop printer-rama. Laptop survived, but the desktop won't boot, monitor gives only the "no synch" color show, desktop power on switch no longer cycles to "off". Oh boy....here's where I need collective input: what is the most likely prognosis? Do I have a sensible trouble shooting path in front of me, or is it pretty clearly a fried motherboard? If so...the current dead desktop is a Dell PII400 (hey, it's paid for!) I do have available to me a P4 2.4GHz chip. I wouldn't mind doing the obvious upgrade (especially if that's the only fix-it option available), but am wondering if I can save the data on the c: partition of the HDD on the dead desktop system by good choice of new mobo (unless I get a new HDD and set it as root, am I SOL on the c: data?) I am PC capable, but certainly not a pro. Have managed typical HW upgrades, muddled through full OS crash and reloads successfully, but not today built a system from scratch. Oh, and yes, the "near and dear" to me person now knows better than to try and hot swap a printer cable from a powered up older model desktop. thank you in advance - Bruce

 

[Crashman]

I didn't know it was possible to damage a motherboard by disconnecting a printer cable. I've never seen it happen, or heard of it happening. I can't even imagine how it could happen!

Yes you should be able to recover data from the drive. As for replacing the board (which I doubt is bad), you would also need to replace the power supply and rewire the front pannel connector.

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[brucet]

Crashman - thank you for your inputs. Huh! I admit to being a little surprised that the printer cable connection story isn't on your list of probable causes. As follow-up, Dell tech suggested probable failure of board integrity due to connection flexure, not an electrical 'zap'. Have you ever done or heard of test (like disconnect and reconnect powered up printer cable and powered up PC 10x) for a 'zap' failure mode, or is it the case that it should always be possible to connect and disconnect powered up printer cable to a powered up PC with near zero 'zap' risk? Again, thank you for your time and comments. Brucet

 

[Crashman]

Here's how I do things-I have lot of spare parts. If I believe a part to be bad, I test it on another system. If it fails the test, I replace it. If the system now works, I've confimed it.

In the instance of a bad motherboard I usually suspect other parts first. First I clear BIOS. If that doesn't work, I remove everything from the board except the video card, CPU, and one stick of RAM. If it still doesn't work, I replace the CPU and that one stick of RAM. If that doesn't work, I replace the power supply (simply disconnecting it and connecting another). I can run down that list in about 15 minutes.

A beep code would help. If you have no beep code, it could be the CPU or board. But since you claim the damage happened from removing the printer cable, I'll take your word for it that it's the board.

Dell uses a proprietary power supply, if you replace the board with a non-Dell board, replace the power supply also.

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[brucet]

Dear Crashman - thanks for your inputs - got the system back up with no special fixes. Okay, that bothers me by itself, since it wouldn't beep, boot, or give pixels previously. In any event, here is what I did: I dis-assembled the system (down to removing the MB from the case - inspection showed nothing obviously a problem), cleaned out accumulated dust, and replaced all but the graphics board and single memory stick. Knock me over, system came up. no root cause, saving my pennies for when the old box goes over for good. thank you again. Brucet

 

[Crashman]

Old systems occasionally do weird things. It could have been something as simple as a thin film of oxide on the memory module causing the problem.

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