Calling Ebay experts... need help.

[farooqm]

Brought a Motherboard from ebay for my 2nd machine... original motherboards capacitors had bulged so me being thick bought another 1 which was identical - cost £10+£6 p&p.... it was described as used and tested working.

Replaced old Motherboard with this one, machine booted, but could I get it to recognise the hard disk on my scsi controller - NO updated BIOS , still no luck.

Plugged a IDE disk in, it recognised and let me build XP, did final reboot and ... Nothing..
rebooted and it got to the screen were you see the Windows XP logo with ----- scrolling and locked up....
rebooted into safe mode with networking... FINE.... updated the display driver...
rebooted and it got to the desktop and then locked.

Thats the last time I saw the desktop, all further reboots got me as far as the XP logo with ----- scrolling.

I know its not the other componants as they all work in the 3rd machine I have... even rebuilt XP in the 3rd machine to prove it was not the Hard drive.

Paid using Paypal but seller only had 15 feedback so no buyer protection... is there anything I can do ... or is it a case of take it on the chin

[skuzgib]

Have you contacted the buyer directly and explained your problems? It might work - there are *some* honest people on ebay.

[farooqm]

Not yet... needed to know were I stood first... as it works to an extent.... BUT will not even after spending 15hours on the darn thing let me boot into windows on 3 seperate hard disks.

[Taz]

I would just take it on the chin. It may be an issue between your other components and the mobo or perhaps a static discharge that may have knackered something. It's going to put the seller in an awkward situation - particularly if he is an honest E-Bayer!

If he was honest, he will feel gutted as he would have sold something that worked in his system. If he was a scammer then he'll just say it worked and that's the end of that!

A 15-positive feedback is actually quite good for a private E-Bayer. If he has no negative feedback then check the items he has bought and sold and also the actual comments for the feedback. Check things like the bid history for each item bought and sold to see if his mates have been bidding on everything to push the price up. You'll soon get an idea if he is a scammer or not.

[farooqm]

Hmmm... replaced a Epox 8kha+ rev 2 with an Epox 8kha+ rev 2.

Fairly positive its not a componant mismatch...
Example... Working CPU, Memory, GPU & Scsi Controller with 1 disk attached.
All works fine in old motherboard even with the bulging caps AND work fine in my 3rd machine loads Windows fine.

With the ebay motherboard in the machine the disk is sometime detected ... sometimes not... when it is detected it gets no further than the SCSI controller drive detection screen, doesn't even attempt to load windows.
Tried alternate GPU - Matrox
Tried alternate SCSI drive
Tried alternate memory
Tried alternate SCSI Controller

All to no avail.... so hence my conclusion.

[ultimate]

If you dont get any satisfaction from the seller and seeing that you have 2 identical boards I suggest you desolder the capacitors from your old board and replace them from the board you bought, it's a fairly simple job providing that you can solder if not get someone to do it for you, that way you will have many spares to use off that board.