need help troubleshooting motherboard

[belledog]

Hi all-
I am new to this forum and I hope someone might be able to help me. My older e-machine died and I suspect the motherboard. It won't boot even after rebooting with the restore disc. My question is should I replace the motherboard and proceesor? I am having trouble finding the original part- e-machine has it listed as no longer available. The motherboard is a FIC VC31. Could anyone reccomend a compatible MB- I have already replaced the computer but I want to get it working for my daughter.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Linda

[blubomber]

Welcome to TechIMO!!!

Do you get anything on the monitor when you turn it on? A POST screen? (POST= Power On Self Test)

Do you get any beeps from the computer when you turn it on? Can you hear the Hard Drive spin up? Does the CD ROM light blink?

What was happening with the computer just before you could not get it to boot? Did it crash while it was on? Did you come in one morning and it would not work?

[amdkt7]

This is what you have:

http://www.fic.com.tw/product/mother...cy&model_id=36

Is there room in your case for a standard size mobo? This one is a microATX. You could find a replacement mobo easy enough, perhaps someone with more time can track down something.

Of course, we don't know if its the mobo, cpu, or memory that is bad.

It would be a bummer to buy a mobo, then find that it still will not boot because the memory or cpu was bad.

More info on what the symptoms are is needed!

[John Prophet]

Tell us the EXACT symptoms. You say it wont boot....what does it do EXACTLY. Nothing?? Powers on but nothing on the screen? Does it beep at all? What?

Cuz, as stated, it could be the power supply or something else. The power supply in those are well known to be chronically underpowered and the often burn out. They make better replacement ones now.

JP

[belledog]

Ok- this is what the system is doing- it happened when I was rebooting the computer due to it "locking up" (very rare for xp's I have found).
I get the black screen stating that "windows did not start sucessfully...etc". When I try to let it boot normally nothing more happens- the screen stays the same with the message on it. When I choose the start in safe mode option it scrolls through a screenful of lines and stops on the line ending in "...System32/Drivers/agp440sys"
nothing further happens.
I rebooted the computer with the e-machines restore disc (after saving my data off the harddrive by pulling it and using another computer- what a pain...) and the same thing happens.
Can anyone tell what's going on?
Thehard drive, power supply, and disc drives seem to be working fine.
Thanks for any help!!!
Linda

[amdkt7]

Agp440sys is video related, perhaps the video card is going bad.

I would take it out, then put it back in making sure it is fully seated in it's slot.
I'd suggest reseating everything else as well.

Does sound like a hardware problem. But it could be a number of things.

Did you make any changes to the system before this happened? Any changes to system settings, or new hardware?

[belledog]

I did take everthing apart and re-seat it. It didn't make any difference.
Linda

[belledog]

In addition- I did not make any changes to the system before this happened.
Weird...
Linda

[amdkt7]

I think I would swapp the video card first, but you will have to change the video driver.

One easy thing to do would be to run Memtest86
http://www.memtest86.com/

The download will make a floppy which you use to boot the system. It tests the memory/cpu. This will help rule out some things.

I would not want to guess which componet is bad, but video or mobo is my best idea.