Dead eMachines... motherboard?

[fendel]

My friend has an eMachines T3092 that she bought a year and a half ago. It was working normally one night until she rebooted and then suddenly it wouldn't go into Windows.

Basically, she turns it on, the fans are whirring, I think I hear a tiny bit of hard drive noise but then nothing. The machine gets as far as the memory test (512MB RAM ok, etc), but then just sits there.

Went into BIOS, changed the boot order. Couldn't boot from the HD or the CDROM or the DVD-R. Couldn't boot from a USB pen drive, although given the limited options in that BIOS I wasn't surprised (I think "removable disk" was the closest thing I saw to USB drive).

Swapped out the power supply (choked with dust) with a new decent one. No dice.

I guessed that the IDE controller is shot, or the motherboard in general is hosed. I read elsewhere that in eMachines the power supply often dies and takes the motherboard with it, so I'm leaving the new PS in there... I ordered a replacement motherboard; managed to find the same one currently in there (FIC AU31), so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping to avoid the Windows re-activation nightmare and be able to use her existing eMachines restore CD. If it still doesn't work when I put in the new mobo, I have a spare CPU I can try in there.

Do you think I called this one right?

 

[AdamSnow]

Narrow it down... unplug -everything- even the RAM and try to turn it on... does it POST? if so - start adding more... add 1 stick of RAM... turn it on, does it POST? etc...

It could just be a hard drive that is dead, causing it not to boot at all... or it could be a bad stick of RAM, etc...

Isolation is key while diagnosing problems.

 

[Jiggz]

If the system post on bios which is obviously present as you said it stops in the mem test then the CPU is not the culprit. Is the HDD detected in the bios. If yes then maybe it could also be dead. So disconnect the hdd and then keep the CD Rom. Make sure the jumpers are set right. Boot using Windows CD and if the sytem boots from the CD then you can assume the HDD is dead. Why remove it first, well if could be affecting the IDE controller.

 

[fendel]

Hi all. I tried swapping out the RAM, no dice. There's not much else to remove--a PCI modem card, but everything else (video, sound, LAN) is integrated on the motherboard.

Interesting thought about a dead HD affecting the IDE controller, I hadn't thought of that. I already ordered the motherboard, so I'll try that first, but if there's still a problem I can try it with a different HD.

Thanks for your advice,
fendel