Over the course of the last several months, it has become necessary to monitor and repair different aspects of some computers at work. Over several months a computer repair project came up involving motherboards.
Motherboard Repairs
Three computers began to fail in a month’s time. The end of the warranty period was approaching for some of them and this harkened a response involving replacing the motherboards with new ones and an upgrade in memory.
Symptoms
The first indication that there was a problem was boot up time. Normally boot up time occurred in less than one minute. Now it was taking five. When the computer did come up it performed normal operations, but it faltered over some operations, like loading files or printing. These symptoms indicated that the motherboard was the problem.
Analysis
To understand the nature of the problem it was necessary to run several tests that identified where the problem was occurring. The program used for testing purposes was the Professional Suite & Tool Kit. This program allowed the technician to test the motherboard, power supply, CD, and the USB Flash Drive. The log results showed that the Motherboard had a heating problem caused initially by a bad power supply.
Preparation For Replacement
While in the earlier PC days, the number of motherboards was limited, it became apparent very quickly, that replacing the motherboard had to take place with one that met several important features. First was size. The motherboard had to fit in the casing.
Next, it was important to determine what hardware was still good and operational. Technicians used a flowchart that guided them on what tests to conduct and in what order. They conducted tests on memory sticks, by removing them from the hard drive and placing them on a different one. When the other computer with the replaced memory sticks booted up, you could eliminate memory as a hard ware problem.
Performance tests on the hard drive occurred. The technician replaced the hard drives into a different computer. When the second computer came up, that eliminated the hard drive as a possible cause.
Finally, the power supply was tested on a different computer and that computer also came up.
By the process of elimination, the technicians concluded that the motherboard was the problem.
The Map
Finally, the technicians performed one more step before removing and replacing the motherboard. They drew a map of all the wiring connectors on the motherboard. This was a detailed configuration so as to eliminate any guesswork about where to connect wires or jumpers or any devices to the motherboard.
The Replacement
Because the technicians performed a variety of tests on the hardware to begin with, it was easy to perform the task of replacing the faulty motherboard. After the technicians replaced the parts one by one, and the map presented the wiring configuration, the replacement took less than a half hour.