TROUBLE SHOOTING THE MOTHER BOARD OF A COMPUTER BASIC INFORMATION AND TUTORIALS

Most motherboard problems are related to cabling and connections. Ensure all cables are connected firmly. Ribbon cables and power cables can often come loose.

Ensure all ‘plugin’ items such as the CPU, RAM modules and adapters such as video cards, modems, etc. are inserted correctly. Contacts can become oxidized or dirty: as a quick fix, remove and reinsert the item several times to wear away the oxide.

This is not a long-term solution, the parts should be removed and cleaned with a good quality contact cleaner.

Other problems are often related to specific hardware but check the items below first.

-Remove all add-on cards except the graphics adapter and start the machine. If that fails to give a running machine, check connections, settings, CPU and RAM compatibility, etc. in the motherboard technical specification.

Keep the PC speaker connected but not any external speakers. Reset the BIOS settings to their default values. On some boards there is a jumper or other way to clear the BIOS settings.

-Is there sufficient power from the power supply?

-Try a different keyboard.

-Check for bent pins on the board. You might be lucky if you try to

-Try disabling the cache in the BIOS. If this makes the machine work, straighten them. If not, you will need to buy a new board!