My new PC sucks

[Kooldino]

Perfect example of the lunacy of this PC:

I went to use it last night, having not used it from the night before. I had nothing taxing running when I left it...

*Turn on monitor*

The XP logon screen comes up.

"Hmm...I don't recall rebooting this last night."

I tried to log in. However, there was no mouse cursor, and the system didn't respond to any keys.

I pressed the power button to initiate shutdown. No dice.

I had to hold down the button to shut the system off.

I went to turn the system back on, and the fans spun up, but it never posted.

Off again, on again, etc.

This game lasted about 5 minutes before the system would POST again.

:-(

[schmosef]

RMA the motherboard.

[Evildead666]

And check as many of the removable components in another machine. You never know, some might have been damaged.

[Kooldino]

RMA the motherboard.

Yeah, you might be right here.

[Kooldino]

Ok, so I setup an RMA with newegg for my board.

The problem is that according to recent newegg user reviews of my board, other users are having similar issues with the rebooting and such. This makes me want to get a completely different board, and sell the one I get from the RMA.

Does anyone have any reccomendations for a ROCK SOLID 939 board? I need these features:

6 or more USB ports
Firewire
Good overclockability
Reasonable price
SATA
PATA
3+ PCI slots


I DO NOT need:
SLi
on board sound
on board video

[Wombat]

I really like my DFI Lan-Party. It does have on-board audio, but whatever. Meets all of your other requirements, and then some.

[Kooldino]

Which Lan-Party?

[Wombat]

Something out of the UT series. I think they've discontinued my exact model, though.

[Kooldino]

Ok, my new board should be here today.

It's based off the Nforce4, whereas my current board is an ATi Crossfire board.

Is there a painless way to do this swap without windows doing ape on me?

[DJ]

I switched from an Asus P4P800 to a Gigabite Nforce 4 board and didn't need to reinstall, it just worked. Most likely that would not happen in your case but I have been able to what you want by simply running setup, go to the point where it says searching for previous version of MS OS and then hit "R" for repair. 99% of the time this works with all you apps intact.

DJ

[lowlifecat]

wow, i wish it was so easy for me. going from my A8V-E dx to the A8N -VM CSM caused some major issues on my system. even repair wouldn't work.

[schmosef]

There are a bunch of sites that talk about strategies for doing this. Google and you'll find something.

DJ's suggestion is good.

I'd manually uninstall the chipset drivers for the old motherboard before doing the swap.

[DJ]

wow, i wish it was so easy for me. going from my A8V-E dx to the A8N -VM CSM caused some major issues on my system. even repair wouldn't work.

Don't feel bad. I have had that problem with a Biostar board. Had to do a complete install.

DJ

[The PIT]

sysprep ????

[Kooldino]

Well, I just swapped the boards and it booted right up.

I flashed the BIOS with the new BETA BIOS that came out, since the last non-BETA BIOS is very old.

I installed the drivers for the new board, with the exception of the IDE driver that I recall reading not to install. Did I remember that incorrectly, or should I go install the IDE drivers? It's an NForce 4 board...A8N-SLI Premium.