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What started out as a new hard drive install on my second machine has now turned into a possible dead motherboard, but I wanted to get some opinions to make sure I'm not overlooking something.
My BH-6 (1.0) system started out about 4 or 5 years ago with a Celeron 300a overclocked to 450 (256MB RAM, Win98SE). I ran with that until about a year ago when I upgraded the BIOS to SS and installed a new 1Ghz Celeron processor (never overclocked). This configuration has been running fine until a few days ago when Win98 started freezing just before it finished booting. I'm not sure if Win98 just lost it's mind or if I had a hard drive crashing (WD 20G, about 3 years old), but either way it didn't matter - I decided to just buy a new drive, start clean, ditch Win98 and install XP Pro. So, I got a WD2000JB 200G Drive, Promise ATA133 controller (so I could see the whole drive) and 512MB Crucial RAM (before I bought the RAM, I made sure to check the Crucial site to get RAM that was compatible with the BH6).
I removed the old hardware, installed the new hardware and proceeded to install XP. This is where things took an unexpected turn. At one point during the XP installation, at the screen where I was to pick how I wanted to partition the drive, the machine spontaneously rebooted. Strange, I thought, so I tried again. This time it rebooted in a different spot. I tried this several times, never getting as far as I did the first time, it would always reboot itself (same effect as hitting the reset switch). I then decided to power down, turn off the power supply, remove the power cable and start fresh. But, when I went to fire it up again, this time I got no video. I also noticed the DVD drive or floppy didn't light up. The keyboard lights flickered for a second and the power supply fan and CPU fan were both spinning but that was it.
I thought the power supply might have been bad so I took the power supply out of my third machine, put it in the problem machine but got the same result. Also, I tried a different video card, different RAM, different CPU. I tested with only 1 stick of RAM and a video card on the motherboard (all other cards removed). I also tested all the machine #2 components in the #3 machine - they all worked fine in #3 but not in #2.
At this point, unless I'm overlooking something, the only thing I haven't tested in another environment is the motherboard. This leads me to believe that the motherboard must have died. Strange coincidence or maybe this was the problem all along, who knows, but the freezing I was getting seemed to be too predictable to be a motherboard failure (it always froze at exactly the same spot). Is there anything I missed, or anything else I can try?
If the motherboard is dead...
I can't complain too much, I got more life out of this one than any other I've ever owned (by far). It does suck though to have just bought 512MB of ram that probably won't work in any new motherboards (or am I wrong about that?).
Does anyone have any recommendations for new motherboards/CPU/RAM etc...? The machine will be running Windows XP Pro (24/7) and I know I want at least 512MB RAM.
As far as performance goes, for what this machine does (software development), I was more than happy with the performance of my 1Ghz Celeron with 256MB so I'm assuming that any new generation motherboard/CPU will be faster than what I already had. I won't have the need to overclock the CPU or video and price definitely takes precedence over performance here BUT, stability is critical. I can't afford to be wasting time with an unstable install and debugging problems, that will cost me lots of money. My main gaming system has an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe / P4 2.8G, which I'm happy with, but I'm not going to spend that kind of money for this machine. I have no problem going AMD if that's a better route (my 3rd machine is an Athlon 1Ghz) .
My power supply is an Enermax EG301P-VB 300 Watt. Will this be good enough for a new system with only one HD and DVD drive?
Also, I have a Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 card. Am I going to be able to run this card on newer motherboards or am I going to run into AGP voltage problems? If so, would it be worthwhile to look for a motherboard with integrated video (I have no graphic needs on this machine other than general 2D Windows stuff)?
Thanks in advance for all input.
My BH-6 (1.0) system started out about 4 or 5 years ago with a Celeron 300a overclocked to 450 (256MB RAM, Win98SE). I ran with that until about a year ago when I upgraded the BIOS to SS and installed a new 1Ghz Celeron processor (never overclocked). This configuration has been running fine until a few days ago when Win98 started freezing just before it finished booting. I'm not sure if Win98 just lost it's mind or if I had a hard drive crashing (WD 20G, about 3 years old), but either way it didn't matter - I decided to just buy a new drive, start clean, ditch Win98 and install XP Pro. So, I got a WD2000JB 200G Drive, Promise ATA133 controller (so I could see the whole drive) and 512MB Crucial RAM (before I bought the RAM, I made sure to check the Crucial site to get RAM that was compatible with the BH6).
I removed the old hardware, installed the new hardware and proceeded to install XP. This is where things took an unexpected turn. At one point during the XP installation, at the screen where I was to pick how I wanted to partition the drive, the machine spontaneously rebooted. Strange, I thought, so I tried again. This time it rebooted in a different spot. I tried this several times, never getting as far as I did the first time, it would always reboot itself (same effect as hitting the reset switch). I then decided to power down, turn off the power supply, remove the power cable and start fresh. But, when I went to fire it up again, this time I got no video. I also noticed the DVD drive or floppy didn't light up. The keyboard lights flickered for a second and the power supply fan and CPU fan were both spinning but that was it.
I thought the power supply might have been bad so I took the power supply out of my third machine, put it in the problem machine but got the same result. Also, I tried a different video card, different RAM, different CPU. I tested with only 1 stick of RAM and a video card on the motherboard (all other cards removed). I also tested all the machine #2 components in the #3 machine - they all worked fine in #3 but not in #2.
At this point, unless I'm overlooking something, the only thing I haven't tested in another environment is the motherboard. This leads me to believe that the motherboard must have died. Strange coincidence or maybe this was the problem all along, who knows, but the freezing I was getting seemed to be too predictable to be a motherboard failure (it always froze at exactly the same spot). Is there anything I missed, or anything else I can try?
If the motherboard is dead...
I can't complain too much, I got more life out of this one than any other I've ever owned (by far). It does suck though to have just bought 512MB of ram that probably won't work in any new motherboards (or am I wrong about that?).
Does anyone have any recommendations for new motherboards/CPU/RAM etc...? The machine will be running Windows XP Pro (24/7) and I know I want at least 512MB RAM.
As far as performance goes, for what this machine does (software development), I was more than happy with the performance of my 1Ghz Celeron with 256MB so I'm assuming that any new generation motherboard/CPU will be faster than what I already had. I won't have the need to overclock the CPU or video and price definitely takes precedence over performance here BUT, stability is critical. I can't afford to be wasting time with an unstable install and debugging problems, that will cost me lots of money. My main gaming system has an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe / P4 2.8G, which I'm happy with, but I'm not going to spend that kind of money for this machine. I have no problem going AMD if that's a better route (my 3rd machine is an Athlon 1Ghz) .
My power supply is an Enermax EG301P-VB 300 Watt. Will this be good enough for a new system with only one HD and DVD drive?
Also, I have a Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 card. Am I going to be able to run this card on newer motherboards or am I going to run into AGP voltage problems? If so, would it be worthwhile to look for a motherboard with integrated video (I have no graphic needs on this machine other than general 2D Windows stuff)?
Thanks in advance for all input.
