Transferring Dell to other case

[frankenhud]

I got my new motherboard (Intel D850EMVR) today--very quickly from ebay, which is always nice. I mounted it, hooked everything up, put the CPU and heatsink on, etc. and turned it on.

I wasn't fully expecting to be able to use Windows, but I wanted to check out the BIOS. It posted right away, and everything looked good; it had the hard drives, dvd drive, memory, processor all registered correctly. I set the time, and just for kicks restarted it to see what happened.

To my surprise Windows booted right up. The mouse wasn't working and the video resolution was low, but it started up seemingly normally otherwise. Here's the fun part.

I turned away to look for my Windows disc to do a repair install, and when I turned back the computer was off. Hmm. Now it won't turn on, at all. I've tried all the tricks, setting the bios jumper to "configure," removing the battery, etc. and it won't do anything. The board's lights come on, but when connected, the hard drives don't spin up. When I unplugged the IDE cable and restarted, the hard drives spun, but still no action. I unplugged everything so it was just mobo, video card and keyboard, tried the same tricks again, and it won't do anything still.

WTF??!?!?!? Did Windows detect a new motherboard and blacklist it, or destroy it or something? This is very disheartening.

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: frankenhud
I got my new motherboard (Intel D850EMVR) today--very quickly from ebay, which is always nice. I mounted it, hooked everything up, put the CPU and heatsink on, etc. and turned it on.

I wasn't fully expecting to be able to use Windows, but I wanted to check out the BIOS. It posted right away, and everything looked good; it had the hard drives, dvd drive, memory, processor all registered correctly. I set the time, and just for kicks restarted it to see what happened.

To my surprise Windows booted right up. The mouse wasn't working and the video resolution was low, but it started up seemingly normally otherwise. Here's the fun part.

I turned away to look for my Windows disc to do a repair install, and when I turned back the computer was off. Hmm. Now it won't turn on, at all. I've tried all the tricks, setting the bios jumper to "configure," removing the battery, etc. and it won't do anything. The board's lights come on, but when connected, the hard drives don't spin up. When I unplugged the IDE cable and restarted, the hard drives spun, but still no action. I unplugged everything so it was just mobo, video card and keyboard, tried the same tricks again, and it won't do anything still.

WTF??!?!?!? Did Windows detect a new motherboard and blacklist it, or destroy it or something? This is very disheartening.

Windows isn't able to do physical harm to your system like that, to be completely honest that sounds like either a bad power supply or bad motherboard.

 

[frankenhud]

Good news, I figured out the problem. The other day I decided to put a length of heat shrink tubing on the front panel wires to wrangle them a little, because they were frizzing all over the place, and too long as well. I do a lot of DIY audio stuff, and I'm so used to using Teflon-insulated wire that I forgot, cheap wire is insulated with PVC, which will melt!! I finally noticed last night that the insulation on either end of the heat shrink looked weird; I investigated and found it was melted, to the point that bare wire was exposed. I cut out the whole section and spliced the good ends together.

Everything is solved now. The PC booted up, I activated XP over the phone, and it's all good! I'm especially happy I won't have to spend $100 on XP again. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[DerwenArtos12]

HA, it was a grounding issue, just an odd one... Congrats on finding it and enjoy your system.

 

[Commontone]

I'm now thinking ahead 6 months or so to getting a new Core 2 Duo PC. My copy of XP let me transfer motherboards this time; will it do it again, or is there a limit to how much hardware change it will tolerate?

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: Commontone
I'm now thinking ahead 6 months or so to getting a new Core 2 Duo PC. My copy of XP let me transfer motherboards this time; will it do it again, or is there a limit to how much hardware change it will tolerate?

the platform was essentially the same so it may not have even noticed the changeover. Going to a whole new platform and you'll need to do a repair install. After you install you'll have to call the microsoft activation 1-800 number to activate but it should.