General PC question - Non Pro Tools

[Chuck1073]

Just a quick question for the panel.

I've got a Emachines PC (my wifes) that suddenly had taken to getting stuck on the bios splash screen...won't boot to windows. It will go into the bios when asked...but more slowly than usual.

I'm guessing the mobo is [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep]e. Good guess?

[JMS40]

If you're booting and getting to BIOS, it's likely not the motherboard, ram, CPU, or power supply.
My guess is drive related. Either it's physically failing, or the file system/OS has gotten buffed up.

[Chuck1073]

That was my first guess too. It's just actling differently than any drive failure I've seen before.

Thanks for your help!

[TOM@METRO]

Put in a bootable CD and see what happens. Tell the bios to boot from it.

[Chuck1073]

After replacing the C drive it looks like it may be the mobo now. Where before I could boot from an optical drive...and was about to yesterday to re-install Windows....now Im getting an error message saying that the optical drive failed...."check cable". Swapped out cables and optical drives....same outcome. Noticing that the heatsink on the chips set feels abnormally hot too.

[albee1952]

Are you getting any boot signals? Usually a single beep means all is good, but more than 1 beep is often a signal of a problem(not sure if you could find out on that old beast). Another possibility, the CMOS battery might be dead(its up to you whether you want to sink any more money into it).

[Chuck1073]

There's no speaker hooked up on the mobo itself....battery's OK as the bios holds settings, time/date and so on.

The mobo's just on it way out.

No biggie. For an Athon 64/DDR 800 board I can fix it all for about 30-bucks thru Newegg. Dunn an Dunn.