Is this a Board Issue?

Hi everyone,

Just wanted some input on a situation that I'm currently facing.

An Athlon 64 2 desktop was brought to me for repairs when the Windows XP on it ceased to boot. I then tried their CD which was scratched to the brim and it didn't install properly. I then tried, as an evaluation copy my Windows 7 CD on the machine. It installed fine for several days until the owner came to pick it up. Wanting to present the fixed desktop to recommend they got another copy of their Windows XP CD, it had a BCD error. So I was a bit so I was a bit surprised and told him that I'd look further into it. I figured it was the HDD that was corrupted and true enough, when testing it with HDTune, it had several bad sectors.

I replaced that SATA drive with another one I had which was a known good drive and it did the same thing, Windows couldn't even install properly this time.

I figured this was an issue with either the SATA controller or the PSU. But after several unexpected "power -offs" from the machine, I decided it was the PSU, which I just replaced with a brand new one. I then formatted and imaged the machine just in case.

Same thing happened again after a day with the owner. It's now back with me. I did notice something else though. Almost always when booting onto safe mode or any live environment such as Parted Magic, Hiren's Boot CD MiniXP, I get a garbled display. It finally went back to having an issue with the BCD after several attempts to start it in different modes. Perhaps this is just a side effect of hard power offs. I can't say it's a on board GPU problem since it doesn't happen even spending hours on DOS environments.

I'm certainly confused right now and I just imaged the machine right now and I'm thinking on it. I'd love some input on this.

Currently, I'm leaning towards replacing the motherboard. I've already done a memtest for the RAM and that seems to be in order.

Any input on this will surely help. Thanks!

you could try different SATA ports, but it sounds like there is something broken in the CPU or mobo as they are the only ones that can screw up data in a HDD other than the HDD itself and RAM that are clean as you said.

Using a relatively high-end (10 years ago anywa, for nowadays standards it is trashy) 64mb GPU would be A LOT better than whatever that board has as integrated graphics, but I think that it's unrelated with the main issue.

bobafetthotmail said:

you could try different SATA ports, but it sounds like there is something broken in the CPU or mobo as they are the only ones that can screw up data in a HDD other than the HDD itself and RAM that are clean as you said.

Using a relatively high-end (10 years ago anywa, for nowadays standards it is trashy) 64mb GPU would be A LOT better than whatever that board has as integrated graphics, but I think that it's unrelated with the main issue.

Yup, already tried a different SATA port. So would you consider getting a discrete GPU? Because that's what I'm considering now.

yes, as I said even a trashy one (by nowadays standards) will be better than the integrated one, and it will likely fix the video issues.

Point is, I doubt it will matter for the installation becoming corrupt, but you never know. I have a bunch of such cards I use for troubleshooting, you may want to invest in a few if you are a tech.

bobafetthotmail said:

yes, as I said even a trashy one (by nowadays standards) will be better than the integrated one, and it will likely fix the video issues.

Point is, I doubt it will matter for the installation becoming corrupt, but you never know. I have a bunch of such cards I use for troubleshooting, you may want to invest in a few if you are a tech.

Yup, that can't be explained by the faulty graphics So I guess the best way is with the replacement of the board. Well, I'm not officially a tech yet.

pscowboy said:

I had a pc once that drove me crazy for a week. Machine would boot sometimes. When at desktop, erratic behavior.

Constant freezes, corruption, etc. One by one I replaced every piece of hardware (except mobo). Still the errors persisted.

By accident, I found out that one connector INSIDE the molex plugged into the hd was burned. Had to replace because all others were used for peripherals. Problem solved.

So, unplug all the molexes, and look inside to see if they are all pristine white; no brown or black discoloration.

Looked into that and already replaced my HDD