Motherboards

[Furby]

The day after Thanksgiving my parents bought a HP desktop puter at one of the box store sales.
There haven't been any problems with it up until last week.
It totally froze up so that you couldn't even get to windows.
My Mom and Brother spent a fair amount of time on the phone with HP trying to figure out the problem.
It was decided that the motherboard was bad and the HP rep was sending out a slip so that the puter could be sent in as it was under warrenty.
Next day the puter started right up with no problems and has been working ok since.
My Mom called and put a hold on the return slip, just in case it did it again.

Here is the question, should they go ahead and send it in anyways while it is under warrenty?
If it was the motherboard, would it just start working again?
They really don't want to be with out a puter while sending this in, but would like to get it fixed under warrenty if something is wrong with it.
Any thoughts?

[Ianab]

I hate those ones  >:(

One thing that can happen is that something locks up electrically on the motherboard but due to the ATX power supply allways keeping standby power on the board it never gets reset untill you completely unplug it from the wall. Rebooting it or turning it off at the front switch just wont clear it. Was it left without power overnight?

If you still have plenty of warranty I'd see how it goes for a few months. If it keeps happening then send it back, otherwise I wouldn't worry. You could cause new problems shipping the thing around and replacing parts for no reason  :

Ian

[fstedy]

Sometimes heat can also be the problem and when it cools down it will work fine. Was there anything that would have caused it to heat up when you had the problem (blocked vents in the case or a heat source close by like a space heater)? As Ianab suggested play it by ear if you have enough warranty left. Did you have any functions at all when she froze? The old power down trick usually works with the computerized slot machines I work on.

[SwampDonkey]

I know of 3 Acers, the only 3 Acer laptops I know the owners as well and all three of them would lockup when it went into Hybernate and sometimes it would go into Hybernate on it's own when the screen saver activiated. You could press and hold the power button and sometimes it would reboot and sometimes it was dead and had to be sent back.  >:(

Had 2 HP at work, had to replace the both of'em. They went to all Dells, problem gone except for Win 98, and Access '97 problems.

[Den Socling]

My computer was showing a lot of symptons of a motherboard problem (like freezing up) but when our company computer guy was going to swap my HD to a back-up computer, he found that a fan in the power supply wasn't running. Replaced the fan and all is well.

[Bill]

All good info so far about motherboards and such.

FWIW I'd like to turn your attention to a " backup ". Most people tend to install various programs and PERSONAL data - be it irreplaceable pictures of loved ones, banking info, and such - on their computers. Even though this problem may be a motherboard ( maybe ) the next problem could be the one that wipes out your pesonal data ( saved on your hard disk ). A backup is a procedure to copy needed data saved on your computer to another device that can be moved from computer to computer ( ie broken to new ). In the older days they used punch cards, tape, external hard disks and such. Nowadays they've progressed from floppy disks to writable CD's to writable DVD's to little USB/Firewire flash memory cards. I would like to recommend to you that you ask  HP's help desk how to save your personal data to a removable/transferable medium and then for extra credit you can have them explain how to save all your windows settings and programs.

For my own computer I do a backup of my personal data everytime I add more than I would be willing to lose if the computer goes belly up.

BTW my apologies if you've already considered "backups" - I used to work with a computer company and I think I slipped into one of my canned speeches here  - oh well .

Good Luck

[Engineer]

To echo some other comments here, usually the only time I have ever had any major computer hiccups is either a hard drive failure (rare) or a dead fan somewhere (usually the power supply).    I'd guess that there's a problem in the power supply and by letting it sit and cool, it temporarily fixed itself.    I think that most times a power supply is only slightly cheaper than a new mobo, but the PS is infinitely easier to replace.

[GF]

We seen this problem on some Dell computers that were purchased about 1 1/2 yrs ago, the computer would lock up randomly.  I talked to our Dell rep about the issue because we were seeing this on alot of computers, on some the intel chip on the system board would have a hole burned entirely through it.  Come to find out the chips manufactured were faulty, not only did Dell have this chip on their system board so did Compaq/HP, IBM and others, it was a widespread problem.  If I recall correctly it was the Intel Video chipset that had the problem.  You may check to see if your video driver is Intel.  Even if you disable the onboard video and install a different video card it would still have the same problem.

Any unit that had this problem from Dell was replaced with an entirely new later model Dell CPU. 

[Modat22]

The problem I've seen happening lately with computers I've fixed for friends are electrolytic capacitors around the voltage regulators blowing up from the heat. I've seen this in gateway, dell and an mei motherboard.

Its easy to spot this, look for little cans around the processor, if you see one with a rounded out top (like a can of soup gone bad) you got a bad cap, If you see a spatter of white stuff or oily stuff around a can, you have a blown cap.

[thedeeredude]

Motherboard?  Isn't that the thing they had hanging in classrooms back in the day for when kids got outta line :D

[Modat22]

Motherboard?  Isn't that the thing they had hanging in classrooms back in the day for when kids got outta line :D

A few geeky types named them that because they thought of them like a mother ship where little ships connected and docked. The repair guys named them that for another reason...