Is My Motherboard Dying?

[Rl'Halsinor]

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

The battery you mention is the CMOS, correct? If so, I have two new ones here and I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the headsup about copying everything down first! So far my Memmtest86+ shows my RAM passing 10 sweeps with no errors on Tests 1-8; right down I am in the second sweep of Test 9. Thad Enouf appears to be correct on this matter.

 

[Thad Enouf]

So far my Memmtest86+ shows my RAM passing 10 sweeps with no errors on Tests 1-8; right down I am in the second sweep of Test 9. Thad Enouf appears to be correct on this matter.

Only because I learned the hard way.

 

[Mycanid]

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

Yes ... I agree with this. It initially sounded like a cmos battery problem to me ... :\

Any updates on the board?

And by the way, it IS a lovely little board.

I only skimmed the posts in this thread, but I would suggest one thing. Make a backup of all your data as soon as possible! And if you can, make an "image" of your OS and software, etc. with an OS backup program (like Norton Ghost, Acronis Image Backup, etc.). If it is the board (and not the battery) then it may take some time, but you may be able to slap in another one and ... voila! ... restore the image backup! No reinstalling of programs or OS.

But maybe you already thought of this?

 

[Mycanid]

Oh yes ... unless you have a high end video card or what not in your board, the p3 boards usually do fine with a 300 watt power supply. They are not too expensive. That is ... if the problem is in power supply, of course.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

When I was having trouble I immediately burned all the important information to CD. The RAM passed all Memtest86+ passes. As for the mouse it was definitely not the mobo. I hooked up another one and it is working fine. My next step is to remove the old CMOS battery and replace it with a new one after I write down all the BIOS settings.