# How to test a Motherboard?



## LazyB

Ok first up specs:

MSI KT4A-V VIA Apollo KT400 AMD Motherboard
Sempron 2800
Nvidia Geforce FX 5900ZT
1.5gb Ram (in 1 1gb and 1 512mb format)
1 Seagate 30gb Hard Drive (C:\ Master)
1 Seagate 160gb Hard Drive (D:\ Slave)
2 Dvd Drives (one burner one not) (E:\ and F:\)
Windows 2000 Professional SP4 (on C:\)

I've had this for aproximately one year now, and since then either the motherboard or the 160gb Hard drive (the 30gb one was from an older computer and has only failed me when the ide cable was duff) has become faulty, or was originally I don't know.

Symptons of motherboard:

-Not recognising full amount of RAM in one of the 2 slots (even now it still does this with 2 completely different RAM chips but mostly it recognises them ok).

-Deciding at random intervals to announce that my D: drive was no longer accessible. Several reset usually solved this, and I eventually traced it to what I believe was a bad IDE cable - as this happened on both hard drives and a little cable switching eliminated this.

-My Power supply 'died' or so I thought. Nothing would turn on. While trying to fix this I managed to blow something inside the power supply. However even when used a friend's power supply (taken out of a spare working computer) it still didn't work, then turn power off (at mains) and on again and it worked. Same thing happened when I got a new power supply. Conclusion that turn on at the mains, if the power LED from motherboard is on (visible from back of case) then everything works ok, if not then nothing works (and so long as I leave PC on at the mains then there will be no change in LED being on or off). 
So I'm thinking that since this has happened with PSU's that I know were good then there must be something wrong with the actual motherboard preventing the power getting through it, since it does have the ATX 12V thing so even if PSU is ok if motherboard isn't it won't start (as I understand it)


Symptons of Motherboard OR 160gb Hard drive:

Thrice now I have had my D:\ drive become corrupted, first time without warning, just go to open something that is stored on d:\ drive via link on desktop and get the D:\ not accessible run Chkdisk, thinking it's the same problem which I thought new IDE cable solved, I restart. When I come back it's back to being RAW data (which I was able to recover some of the files from luckily).

Second time I had corrupted messages and chkdisk checking disk integrity at start up (which made the problem worse by moving program's system files around stopping the programs I needed running from running). This one I solved by backing up data and doing a clean format. This was less than a month ago.

Third time was today. I come home, turn on monitor to check my download, see that there is an error of 'D:\ not accessible...' ok through about 5 more of these before managing to close the downloader and stop them. Try to open something on D: and get told it's corrupt, run chkdisk. Thinking that this is just another stupid error I restart, now it's back to RAW data and recovery.


However from all this I can't tell whether this corrupting D:\ drive is as a result of the motheboard intermittently 'dropping' it /unmounting it mid data-transfer and messing up partitions or something, or if it just a dodgy hard drive (first time it did this was before the power supply blew so that isn't the cause). 

I've run the tests from the seagate website and they all come back saying that the hard drive itself is fine, so my question to you kind folk is can I test the motherboard, and if so how?

And any other ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated (as well as any reputable data recovery programs, I still have those I used before but remember them being largely a pain).

Thanks in advance.


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## linderman

Welcome to TSF: :smile: 


First off I would ask that you tell us what make and model motherboard you have ??????

then I would ask what are the makes and models of Power supplies are you using ?????

third I would suggest you run memtest (free >>> in my signature ) it doesnt need to run windows to run this diagnostic memory program >>>> just put it on floppy disk (use another computer) then boot to the floppy and run memtest for at least 4 hours

let us know of your progress


cheers

joe


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## LazyB

Ok I've downloaded and burned memtest so will run it tonight.

The Motherboard is (well listed in the manual as) KT4A-V (MS-7021 v1.0) ATX mainboard. And the chipset is a MSI Apollo KT400A VT8237. If this isn't the right info then tell me what it would be or where I could get it because this is what's on all the manuals and sites under this motherboard, but I may be getting confused between model number and chipset number.

Power supplies: The one that died/blew was a generic brandless one that came with my case, 400W. The one I got to replace it was a "Pcicase PMC1240U 400w P4 ATX 12V PSU" purchased from here [and before anyone says anything about ebuyer, after trying to buy other things from them all the bad reviews of them are based on some pretty terrible customer service, this was my only order they successfully delivered/accepted].

Will post the results of memtest here tomorrow.


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## LazyB

Ok I ran Memtest overnight for 8hours 24minutes, and it came up with:

Pass 4 (number of passes is this? First time I've used memtest)

and Errors 0


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## linderman

Hello:


i lost something in the translation ?????? how are you able to run your motherboard if you think its dead

no memory errors is awesome !!


regards

joe


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## LazyB

Well the motherboard is the only one I have access to, and since my computer has had various problems, ram errors, hard drives corrupting, power failures all of which have ocurred with different components but the common factor is the motherboard. So having had my hard drive corrupt for a second time I'm left thinking that either it's the hard drive, which doesn't explain the power failure (with 3 different power supplies) and the ram not always reporting correctly (4 or maybe even 5 different sticks all suffered from it at one point or another), or there is something wrong with my motherboard.

The motherboard, and the computer still boot (typing this on it right now) but it still doesn't provide an explanation for why it has failed to do so in the past, reported half ram (though when this occured extremely frequently I looked into this and it seemed more likely to be some sort of bios error, but I couldn't find any concrete way to fix it so I learned to live with it) and at intervals stated that d:\ drive not found when seconds earlier I had been using files on said drive.


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## linderman

WOW >>>> sounds like the computer from hell !!!

I would definetely start with a high Quality power supply >>>>> any voltage fluctuations *whatso ever *can cause a hard drive to wig out in a nasty way !!

I would start off by grabbing a Antec SP-500 / that is the lowest cost you will find right now on a high quality PSU >>>> $68.00

if the budget permits >>>> I would even jump up a notch to an ENERMAX of over 500watts !!!!!

I know what you re thingking !!!!! :laugh: its not my powersupply >>>> the computer boots up and runs with the other PSU's !!!!

well my friend ~~~ generic PSU's have such HORRIBLE voltage deviations that they are worthless trash >>>>> that will drive your computer system crazy !!

here are some to avoid like the plague

ATX Power Supplies - Brands from A to Z 

*** RATED BY QUALITY ***

Key
H = High Quality (Good Solid Reliable Brand)
L = Low Quality (Cheap Generic)
M = Medium Quality (In-between)
U = Unknown


A-Power................L
A-Top..................L
A+GPB..................L
AcBel..................L
AC Ryan (Ryanpower)....L
Aerocool...............U
AG.....................L
Ahanix.................L
Akasa..................L
Allied.................L
Antec..................M/H
AOpen..................L
APC....................L
Apex Allied............L
Aspire.................L/M
Astec..................L
Athena.................L
BFG....................L
Broadway Gaming........U
Channel Well...........L
CHAS...................L
Chenbro................U
Chieftec...............L
Coba...................L
Codegen................L
Conrad.................M
CoolerMaster...........H
CoolMax................M
Crystal................L
Dell...................L
Delta..................L
Diablo.................L
Eagle..................L
Echo Star..............L
Enermax................H
Engleking..............M
Enlight................M
Epson..................L
FDK....................L
Fortron (FSP)..........H
Gateway................L
Gazelle Multimedia.....L
Global Marketing.......L
GPower.................L
Guardian...............L
Herolchi...............M
Hipro..................L
HP/Compaq..............L
HPC International......L
Huntkey................L
I-Star.................L
IBM Redundant..........U (expensive)
Intel Redundant........U (expensive)
In Win.................L
Jaguar.................U
Jantech…………..L
Kensington.............L
Kingwin................L
L&C....................L
Leadman................L
Levicom................L
LiteOn.................U
Logisys................U
Mad Dog................L/M
Maxtron................L
MGE....................L
MGE Vortec.............M
MorningStar............L
NEC....................L
Newton.................L
Nexus..................L
Noise Magic............L
NorthQ.................M
Nspire.................L
OCZ....................H
Omega..................L
Packard Bell...........L
PC Power & Cooling.....H
PC-World (PCW).........L
PCMCIS.................U
Power..................L
PowerStream............L
PowerTek...............L
PowerUp................L
PowMax.................L
PowMax XPower..........L
Premium................L
Pyramid................L
Q-Tec..................L
Q-Technology...........L
RaidMax................U
Real Power.............L
Rosewill...............L
SCS....................L
SeaSonic...............H
Shuttle................L
Silent Purepower.......U
SilenX.................L
Silverstone............H
Sky Hawk (Eagle Tech)..L
Sparkle................H
Star Micronics.........L
StarTech...............L
Sun....................L
SuperFlower............L
Supermicro.............L
Tagan..................H
Task...................L
ThermalTake............M
Topower................L
Tri-Mag................L
TSP....................L
Tyan Tiger.............L
TTGI...................L
Ultra-Power Computer...L
Ultra..................M
Ultra X-Connect........L
Vantec.................H
Verax..................H
Vigor..................U
Xion...................L
xPCgear................L
Zalman.................H
Zippy..................L


Thanks Whodat / for the link !!


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