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Failed motherboard, desperate to maintain OS intact

horus

By horus
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horus

horus

Posted
Posted

Hi,

I had the chance to upgrade my CPU for my old PC. I had a Duron 900Mhz and I swapped it with an 1700+ XP.

Everything worked fine until today, when the PC did not start anymore. I've tried everything, and my conclusion is that the motherboard is dead. The CPU cooler isn't moving at all, the PSU doesn't start, there's no beep,etc. only a green LED that turns on.

The motherboard is an ECS K7VZA Rev3.0[7 years old, never abused, did not work 24/7].

It has 9 or 11 inflated capacitors(I think). They look like this one: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/42/120329818_0e20370795_m.jpg

I have 3 HDDs that had OS's in this system, 2 with WinXP, and one with WinMe.

I want to change the motherboard or the whole platform, but I'm desperate to maintain the OS's untouched[desktop arrangement/history/settings/every single bit has to be intact].

Can I achieve this? How? Has anyone ever tried it?

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MrJinje

MrJinje

Posted
Posted (edited)

Easy way would be to use Acronis Universal Restore

Acronis® Backup & Recovery™ 10 Universal Restore™

What happens when a system’s hardware fails or needs to be retired? How do you move the valuable applications and data to a new system or hardware after disaster strikes? How do you quickly restore a system after the hardware has changed?

Acronis solves this common issue with Acronis® Backup & Recovery™ 10 Universal Restore, a fully integrated module that restores servers or workstations to different hardware or to a virtual machine, providing highly flexible disaster recovery and migration options.

The Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Universal Restore module prepares you for even the most unforeseen events without requiring administrators to purchase and maintain identical spare machines.

The process begins when Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 is used to create a transportable image that disassociates the data from the old machine’s underlying hardware. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Universal Restore loads in the new hardware’s own drivers so that the image from the previous hardware platform will allow the machine to be flawlessly restored to a different hardware platform, complete with operating system, applications, data and all previous settings. Recovery can be implemented to an existing system, to a new system with different hardware, or to a virtual server, in minutes, by following these steps:

Probably are a few other P2P (physical to physical) applications that can do similar things, but I have not heard of a free one yet. If anybody knows a freeware Application for this, speak up. Edited by MrJinje
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horus

horus

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Posted (edited)

I've tried with another PSU, same thing. It might also have been from the power button, but I've inverted it with the reset one, and no luck.

Oh, did I mention that the PSUs don't even start[their fans]? Only give power to light up a LED from the Mainboard.

Edited by horus
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MrJinje

MrJinje

Posted
Posted
I've tried with another PSU, same thing. It might also have been from the power button, but I've inverted it with the reset one, and no luck.

Oh, did I mention that the PSUs don't even start[their fans]? Only give power to light up a LED from the Mainboard.

Can you check that your power cable is connected to your electrical socket.

J/K kinda drunk, real advice is check out these PCI tester cards.

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puntoMX

puntoMX

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Posted
It has 9 or 11 inflated capacitors(I think). They look like this one: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/42/120329818_0e20370795_m.jpg
Thats indeed your problem. You can change those capacitors easily and keep it as an ME box for example, but on the other side you never know what more has gone south...

I would however reinstall the OS again on any new, and I'm saying 100% new, system to avoid problems with drivers and to leave all the junk that has build up on the harddisk by temporary files, unused DLLs and so. Sure a program as CC is good in cleaning but nothing beats a fresh installed OS with the latest drivers and updates. Mind you that most modern setups will not support ME any more so check out or Windows 95/98/ME section ;).

Other option is to look for some "second hand" free computers.

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MrJinje

MrJinje

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Doing it from a "dead" system would be even trickier.
Mike Stevens method looks rather user intensive, Acronis does 99% of that for you (if you can afford it)

Dead system, not a problem for Acronis. As long as his hard drive is still working (should be), Acronis can capture the image from the HDD and the Universal Restore add-on will be able to create a hardware-independent image. It will fully preserve all settings, favorites, applications as the OP requested.

The only thing that will be different is during the first boot you may need to add drivers for things on the new equipment. Mostly I just need to run the chipset drivers when I move my machines around.

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jaclaz

jaclaz

Posted
Posted
Doing it from a "dead" system would be even trickier.
Mike Stevens method looks rather user intensive, Acronis does 99% of that for you (if you can afford it)

Dead system, not a problem for Acronis. As long as his hard drive is still working (should be), Acronis can capture the image from the HDD and the Universal Restore add-on will be able to create a hardware-independent image. It will fully preserve all settings, favorites, applications as the OP requested.

The only thing that will be different is during the first boot you may need to add drivers for things on the new equipment. Mostly I just need to run the chipset drivers when I move my machines around.

Well, the link is for the theory of operation.

And, with all due respect :), you sound a bit like an Acronis Sponsor. :unsure:

There are many ways to skin a cat ;) (though the cat won't be happy anyway :ph34r:):

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showforum=43

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19397

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9830

jaclaz

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  • 12 years later...
Molly Dawn

Molly Dawn

Posted
Posted (edited)

Win ME will boot fine when you swap the motherboard.  Win XP, probably not.  Unless you can find EXACTLY the same motherboard, or at least the same exact chipset then MAYBE XP would boot as well. NT operating systems are REAL picky about this sort of swap so the chances of it working are extremely slim, but 9x will usually work just fine . you /may/ need to uninstall things in device manager to resolve resource conflicts, but most of the time it just works.  Just this morning I used the HDD out of a socket 462 athlon machine to boot an old deschutes PII machine for testing purposes and win ME booted right up.  It didn't have drivers for the oddball S3 graphics card in the PII but that didn't matter as all I needed was to verify that the machine would boot (to ensure it was the hdd in the PII and not the ATA controller that was dead).

Edited by Molly Dawn
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