Faulty Motherboard advice Required?

[pritchj]

My PC started behaving oddly a few months ago, switching itself off etc....   It then got worse, the files on my hard-drive started dissapearing.   The computer will now not go pass the loading windows stage before resetting itself.   I've tried to reinstall windows, but even this has failed.... it still wont boot.   I have even tried a working hard-drive from my back-up machine and that wont boot either - it does exactly the same thing (resets before windows loads).

Can anyone give me some advise on this problem, is my motherboard knackered?

Many thanks

Jonathan

[xavier]

Check you bios settings [can you get into bios?]set bios for default.

[patio]

The symptoms could actually mean any component from the PSU to the RAM or anything else could be failing...
Post alot more info on the machine and what happened prior to this and someone will be along shortly...

[pritchj]

I've reset the bios to default (and safe fail), nothing happened.  The motherboard reports the memory as being ok on initial boot screen.  I've taken out my graphics card, and am now on the onboard graphics (no change)

I've tried to reinstall windows but the process reaches 30ish% (if i'm lucky) and then starts giving out read error messages on startup files.  I've tried the same windows cd, cd-drive and hard disk with another motherboard and it installs without any problems (I've tried three different windows cd's and i get the same problem - works on one machine but not this one..... using the same cd-drive and hard drive (and same ide cables).

Does this information make any sense to anyone?

Thanks for all your help

Jonathan

[patio]

My 3 lead suspects in no particular order :

PSU
Borrow a known good one of the same or greater wattage and swap it in there...
If the symptoms go away replace it. Don't buy a cheap one.

RAM
DLoad and run MemTest...let it run at least 2 hours...any errors and you have bad RAM...replace it.

HDD
Find out whose drive you have and DLoad the Free diagnostics from the drive manuf. site.
These are used to create a bootable CD.
Boot to it and run the long test...if it fails replace the drive.

After trying all of these if you still have the issues then it may be the MBoard or CPU.