Possibly a dying Motherboard?

[guitarbloke]

Hey guys/girls

About 3 weeks ago I began gettign BSoD's on my pc whilst booting to Windows (XP Pro). Got to eth splash loading screen but then it BSoD'd on me with a stop code relating to a bad HDD. I rebooted several times and the same thing happened.

I finally anaged to get booted up after about an ahour of leaving the machine alone and all was ok for a few hours then another BSoD - same stop code about bad HDD. On one occassion I manged a chkdsk and it found damage on part of the disk.

But anyway... To cut a very long story slightly short, this continued for a few days until one day I turned on the machine and the fans came on, the LEDs came on but nothing happened, no beeps, no HDD activity, no display - nothing.

This the proceeded to happen every day. If I turned the machine off I then struggled to get it back on again. Usually I would turn it off at night and back on the next day, it always fails to turn back on properly (just the fans, LEDs come on nothing else). If I then leave it off for an hour or more it'll turn back on ust fine. It's been like this for 2 weeks now. Once I've left it a few hours and try again it will stay on for as long as I want, I can game, use apps, internet etc as normal. It's currently been on for the last 4 days as I'm too afraid to turn it off!

Is this a sign of a dead or dying motherboard? I'm not sure because I wouldn't have thought it'd turn back on at all if it was dead, and it's clearly working fine at the moment, I played WoW for at least 18 hours over the weekend with no problems.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks

Sean

[Blitzen]

Can you give full system specs?

I doubt its a dying mobo as they normally just give in and dont eeek it out.

My bet is:
a). Poor power distrubution/Dying PSU
or
b). Dead/dying memory.

Run Memtest and see what happens fella.

[guitarbloke]

Thanks Blitzen, will try memtest this evening when I get home.

System spec as follows:

AMD Athlon x2 5600+
MSI K9N Platinum Motherboard
3Gb Patriot 800Mhz PC2-6400 (C4)
1 x 500Gb Samsung Spinpoint 501LJ (SATA2)
Radeon x1950Pro Graphics card
600W OCZ StealthXStream PSU

Hope that helps!

Cheers!

Sean

[Ferral]

You could also take a look on your motherboard even if it is just to ease your own mind. Check the tops of the capacitors to see if any are raised up or even if any have burst. If all are completely flat and as they should be there shouldn't be any probs.

But like Blitzen said, moreso memory or PSU. Personally I would go with PSU to start off with.

However, try running memtest if you can to see if that brings up any errors.

[peterb]

Blitzen beat me to it (had a problem posting this afternoon)

Check memory first - then look to the PSU - what make and model is it?