Is My Motherboard Dying?

[Rl'Halsinor]

I have an older Pentium 3 system that has been rock solid. The specs are:

CPU: P3 1.2mhz Tualatin
Asus TUSLC-2 motherboard
512 megs of RAM
OS - XP PRO
Antec 350 PSU


However, I have been getting some issues lately:

1. Recently when this system was booted up the frequency of my CPU was off causing all kinds of beeps. I eventually was able to enter the BIOS and set it at 1.2.

2. I usually keep the system on 24/7 and yesterday when I turned the screen on the system was hung at the second start up window, i.e., the one that shows PCI devices. I had to restart and enter the BIOS and set the board at default settings. It booted up.

3. The mouse has suddenly gone south. You click it and it takes awhile before it will connect. However, the cursor works fine. Now it could very easily be that I need a new mouse but its issues occured at the same time as the others. And for an added noob question, Can mice die on their own or is this a rarity?

4. One of my CD-ROM drives isn't recognized. Now I know they go but this is relatively new, barely used. I moved this system 5 feet to make way for my new one and since then it doesn't work. I did check the connections and they are all solid. I did get one error message about IDE controller not found or some such thing.

I have, defraged, ran two different virus scans - no infections, ran two different spyware scans, ran Trendmicro's CWCool scan and found one and deleted the infection, ran harddrive diagnostics and passed. Thoughts? Ideas? Advice? Thanks.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

IME, motherboards either work, fail discretely (eg, the mouse port stops working), or fail completely. Most often when I see sporadic and seemingly random problems, it's either RAM or the power supply (which could, in turn, take out the motherboard).

To replace a P3 MB, you'd likely have to resort to Ebay or maybe a local computer shop that keeps old stuff around. I don't know that it would be worth throwing money at it; if you replace the MB and still have issues, you'd be faced with replacing lots of other dead-end components.

Mice can die and/or become flaky, especially older-style ball meeses. You'd be surprised and disgusted at how much crap those things can suck up.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

The mouse is the kind without the ball but it is not wireless. I'll attempt to do a MemTest86+ and see if it is the RAM. I'm not sure how to go about testing the power supply.

I'll also check the cpacitors as well. Thanks for the feedback. Oh, I actually did find a Socket 370 DFI board over at New Egg. Check out this link if you have time and let me know what you think. The thing I loved about the ASUS was the ease of said board and it is jumperless. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010200280+1070509906&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=280

So far the harddrives are working, plus the sound and video cards, floppy drive, monitor, keyboard and one CD-ROM drive drive.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

DFI stuff is decent enough. It's just a question of whether or not you want to start spending money on an older PC $50 for a MB, then $50 for memory if the MB swap doesn't change, a new CD drive, new PS, etc. you could end up nickle-and-diming yourself to death.

The only thing I'd worry about is if your power supply is flaky, you could just end up killing new parts, too. Have you run one of the diagnostics that will check the voltages, etc?

 

[XCorvis]

Most of your problems sound like they are at least partially related to the bios, so you might try updating that. However, because it's been flaky, I would be prepared for the possibility that it fails completely and your system is unbootable. If that's the case, you might need to replace hardware or upgrade. As an alternative first step, you could try resetting the bios. There's a jumper on the motherboard to do this. You'll have to check your manual for more info, and you'll have to re-enter some of your settings if the system isn't smart enough to auto-detect them.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

Well I do know that I can't update the BIOS because the board is at least 5 years old. I am torn between trying a new board or jumping to another new build altogether. The shame of it is is that the sound card (Old Creative X-Gamer) and video card are doing quite well and I am one of those that hate to discard old but still serviciable hardware. This PC was perfect for my kids doing their homework, surfing the net, email, and playing less demanding PC games.

I don't have any diagnostic tools to check my power supply.

I understand a good deal about the BIOS and I am looking in my user's manual to find it.

If it means I need a new motherboard and and a power supply I think I can live with that, but if the power supply destroys more I'll be less

 

[Thad Enouf]

Are the issues going away when you fix them via bios?

How is the hard drive working? OK?

I doubt it's a RAM problem. Generally, I can't get past POST with a RAM prob.

 

[Odysseus99]

Try disconnecting the optical drives (CD, DVD). I've sometimes had some weird effects when they started to fail.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

I really appreciate everyone's help. Right now I am running a Memtest86+ just in case and so far my RAM has passed 6 times. I'll go at least 4 more for a minimum of 10 and then do Test 9 which takes 3 hours. I've done this test about 8 months ago and I had no errors then.

My harddrive passed the Western Digital Diagnostics in-depth tool, so I have no issues there.

If I knew how to test the voltage on my PSU I would, but I have never done it before so I wouldn't even know where to begin, what to look for, nor recognize what the issues are if any.

I'll check the motherboard capacitors.

As for the BIOS I am still looking for the jumper but from what I read everything is set as is without conflict.

Speaking of DFI, the mobo that I linked to in an earlier post says that it can hold up to 1GB of memory. I do know that the Intel 815E chipset that the ASUS utilized in my motherboard limited the RAM to 512 megs. DFI has a VIA chipset which isn't exactly thrilling me but beggars at this point can't be choosers.

 

[Balnagown]

Your comment about "losing" BIOS parameters such as CPU clock speed & drive letter allocations suggests that the BIOS battery may be dying. This is a small ( thumbnail ) sized battery right on the motherboard. The instructions for the MB will show where this is located & what it's specifications are. Sometimes these items are soldered to the MB & replacing these is usually a shop job. When changing the battery be sure to copy down all non-default parameters ahead of time.

To check the various voltages on your system many BIOSes have an advanced section where you can monitor the actual voltages present. There may also be utilities available for download which can do this in normal operation.

Good luck with this.
Balnagown