Does a fried m-board mean the entire system's ka-put?

[yajaboat]

Don't laugh, I have no idea what this means for me now ...
I had a friend take my computer in to work to have one of her techs look at it. He said it looked (& smelled) like the motherboard was fried. If not a power surge, what else could have caused this? And could its "frying" have ruined anything else? Am I a gonner on this computer or can my system be saved by replacing the motherboard? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

[BigGeek02]

The motherboard is the main board that operates all of the other devices such as the keyboard/mouse/printer/COM ports, and all of your PCI/ISA/AGP etc. devices. Power surges vary from computer to computer because lightning is obviously unpredictable. What I would recommend doing is looking inside of your computer (or find someone that's comfortable doing that if you're not) and search each component (being careful not to get static electricity in the board) for blown resistors, or black spots or anything of the sort. If you find these, the device is basically useless. If there isn't any black on the device, it still could be usable. Get a friend w/ an open slot on their motherboard to let you install your device and see if it works on their board. If it does, then replacing the board will allow you to fix the computer. If not, then you basically need a new computer because the lightning got more than just your motherboard. Best of luck.

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Computer Error Haiku-
"Warning: Universe Corrupt. Reboot?(Y/N)"

[Hardtek1976]

Hello,

The answer to your question is possibly yes and it is also possibly no. The motherboard may have just failed on it's own for no appearent cause. With the smell and looking burnt this would indicate a short on it, thus this would have put a strain on the power supply and caused it to fail. However, the power supply could have went defective causing higher output voltages than normal causing the motherboard to fail and possibly other devices.
Overclocking, power surges, and just plain old coincidence (faulty manufacturing of some component that finally has shown up) are the reasons devices fail. As to surge protectors I recommend both hydro and phone/cable lines be protected as with my experience 90% of surges come in the phone/cable line.
Now back to your delema, your motherboard and power supply are both probalbly history, and the rest of your devices (video/sound/modem etc.)will be a hit and miss.


Ron

[Randy_tx]

Bingo on the previous reply....I just had one come in that had a video card cause the short because the user didnt screw it down and it worked its way out of the slot enough to cause a spike......bye bye motherboard & power supply; however, the devices including hard drive were ok.

[HeKmeH]

Most of the times a problem like that is caused by bad electricity either from a bad power supply or the whole electricity itself. The damage is unknown, it might be just your motherboard, or might have defected other devices, only way to know is to test ur devices on another board and see which still function. 1ce I was just playin a game, it freezed and i smelled something burning. I rarely cover my pc so few seconds i watched my board frying but none of the other devices were defected. All we can do is wish u good luck!!! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by HeKmeH (edited 01-26-2001).]