Motherboard replacement for my pavilion?

[chaznsc]

I have a family PC thats gone haywire. Drive spins up, but boot is hit and miss. Replaced the PSU, not any change.

Anyhow, considering just changing the MOBO. Is it reasonable that I could find a board thats the same dimensions as the pavilions? What about resue of the AMD processor, ram, etc?

Im confortable doing the build, just not picking the parts.

chaz

 

[lsv]

Sounds like it's the drive. Do you have a spare drive you can quickly test out?

 

[nenforcer]

If its not the hard drive then you might be able to find a replacement board on eBay. HP / Dell / Sony often times have a fairly proprietary case build which makes it difficult to fit any other type of motherboard inside them.

Typically hard drive is the first thing to go so I would definitely test that out first like LSV says.

 

[lsv]

If its not the hard drive then you might be able to find a replacement board on eBay. HP / Dell / Sony often times have a fairly proprietary case build which makes it difficult to fit any other type of motherboard inside them.

Typically hard drive is the first thing to go so I would definitely test that out first like LSV says.

Exactly why I said test the HD first.

 

[chaznsc]

Sounds like it's the drive. Do you have a spare drive you can quickly test out?

Can I drop my notebook drive in it? Its a sata also.

The drive does spin up and I can connect to it from my mac using a cable I have.

 

[chaznsc]

If its not the hard drive then you might be able to find a replacement board on eBay. HP / Dell / Sony often times have a fairly proprietary case build which makes it difficult to fit any other type of motherboard inside them.

Typically hard drive is the first thing to go so I would definitely test that out first like LSV says.

Fortunately, this one looks like its screwed down easy enough. Not like the dells we have at work that use a CLIP system. Im very anxious to test the drive out, of course I dont have a spare SATA drive!

 

[chaznsc]

It is possible my MOBO has an IDE interface? I see an empty slot that looks like IDE.

 

[lsv]

A notebook drive should work if you can connect and power it up somehow

I say go to a big chain, buy a SATA HDD. Try it out, if it works great, keep it. If not, return it and you know you have a different problem.

 

[nenforcer]

It is possible my MOBO has an IDE interface? I see an empty slot that looks like IDE.

More than likely unless its a very new HP Pavilion. What model is it? We need more information to know for sure.

 

[chaznsc]

UPDATE: Have an old ATA Drive (2 actually) from working systems. I put one in, connecting to the IDE controller on the MOBO. Install WinXP from CD, boot to CD, format the drive, then the process of installing windows freezes at 30% & 38% on second attempt. Installed the 2nd ATA, same thing. Trying now to install windows 7 from USB drive, first attempt BSOD.

920am - Setup installs files, reboots to hard drive.

936am Windows setup seems HUNG on the last phase of the Windows 7 setup.

945: System is still hung up. Replacing ATA with my SATA drive from notebook.

947: Bios warnings with new boot, reset bios to defaults and reboot. (Bios recognizes drive)

950: System hangs trying to boot into windows. Will attempt reboot.

952: System reboots in a loop. Will NOT boot to windows.

953: Running Windows "startup repair"........Searching for Problems screen.....

958: System Hangs - Put drive back in notebook computer and it boots fine.

Bad MOBO?

 

[tcsenter]

HP / Dell / Sony often times have a fairly proprietary case build which makes it difficult to fit any other type of motherboard inside them.

Only the "slim" or super compact chassis. The motherboards used in the mini-towers and mid-towers are almost always standard Micro ATX. They might have a non-standard connector or cable pin-out for the card reader, though.

Run memtest86+ or install the memory in a known good motherboard to test. Check for bulging or leaking caps on the motherboard. Also you might want to check for a BIOS update. Could be some BIOS issue that has been solved in a BIOS revision.

 

[chaznsc]

I have pulled the drive and am checking the drive for bad sectors. Will run memtest after this is completed.

 

[chaznsc]

Memtest passed 100% on ram.

 

[crucibelle]

chaznsc - Could you post the exact model name/number of the motherboard, please?

 

[crucibelle]

Nevermind, I found it based on another post you made. I think it's an ECS MCP61PM-HM. The specs say it is a micro-atx, but I can't tell by looking at it if it is proprietary, or not. If not, it's an AM2 board, so that is what you need to be looking for.

Link: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...ite=null&lang=en&key=null&product=3567334#N94

 

[tcsenter]

MCP61PM is standard mATX.

 

[crucibelle]

MCP61PM is standard mATX.

Cool. Shouldn't be too difficult for the OP to find a replacement board, then, if the mobo is the problem. :thumbsup:

chaz -- if you do end up needing a new motherboard, just make sure that it supports DDR2 (ram) & AM2 processors and your current hardware (ram & cpu) will work.

Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128394

 

[chaznsc]

UPDATE:
My Board has 4 ram slots. I can populate the board with 2 of them and the system boots most of the time. I can populate all 4 and it refuses. I can run MEMTEST from the CD and it passes either pair of dimms.

My hard drive will not boot my workstation. I have a USB converter kit and set the bios to boot from the USB. Windows starts, then I get a second of a BSOD, then it reboots. Then it wants to go into setup recovery, which it does, and we start the process all over again. Shouldnt it boot to the new workstation?

Possibly a bad board AND a bad drive? (Since the BSOD seems to refuse any of the secondary drives I have installed). I can access the drive, however, from my USB kit and extract data. I just cant seem to boot from it.

EDIT: 216PM - Windows scan-disk and Acronis health monitor report a healthy drive. Perhaps a bad boot record?

 

[nenforcer]

What windows OS was on the notebook hard drive you tried?

Swapping Windows hard drives into new machines is never guaranteed to work and may result in a blue screen due to missing driving / drastically different hardware.

Go simple and just try booting from a Linux LiveCD for instance? Is the machine bootable at all?