WHat's dead ...my CPU or my mobo?

[Jenny]

Hi,
I have an iWill XP333R motherboard with an Athlon 2100+.
I have been getting blue screens for no apparent reason for ages now
....and regularly when I shut down or do anything processor intensive.
I have swapped the graphics card, RAM and done several clean installs
of my Windows XP pro.
I can only think it's the mobo or the CPU. I am thinking of replacing
them but can someone suggest whether it is more likely to be one than
the other? Are there any diagnostics that might pick up intermittent
faults?

Hope you can advise

Thanks
J

 

[Jim]

Any chance your mobo is suffering from the infamouse leaking capacitors
problem??!!

Many mobos that date back to that period ran into this problem, esp. w/ the
KT133 and similar boards. The classic symptom is random errors and
rebooting since the leaking capacitors could literally affect ANYTHING.
Usually begins to show symptoms about 18 months after initial installation
w/ normal usage patterns.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=184286&messageID=1881444

Jim

 

[Jenny]

Thanks Jim,
I'll open it up and see if I can see anything and let you know. It is
obviously an issue though, and hopefully I can get away with just a
new mobo

J

 

[beenthere]

Hi,
I have an iWill XP333R motherboard with an Athlon 2100+.
I have been getting blue screens for no apparent reason for ages now
...and regularly when I shut down or do anything processor intensive.
I have swapped the graphics card, RAM and done several clean installs
of my Windows XP pro.
I can only think it's the mobo or the CPU. I am thinking of replacing
them but can someone suggest whether it is more likely to be one than
the other? Are there any diagnostics that might pick up intermittent
faults?

One thing you can do, is to check in your Event Viewer.
It`s free to do, and will show any application or system faults.
HTH.

 

[Jenny]

Just had a look ...nothing visible to the naked eye ..certainly
nothing as obvious as the ones in the articles.
In anycase, my first option is try another mobo and if I still have
the problem I'll upgrade my CPU ...a bit of extra speed wouldn't hurt!

Thanks again,


J

 

[jaster]

Hi,
I have an iWill XP333R motherboard with an Athlon 2100+. I have been
getting blue screens for no apparent reason for ages now ...and regularly
when I shut down or do anything processor intensive.
I have swapped the graphics card, RAM and done several clean installs
of my Windows XP pro.
I can only think it's the mobo or the CPU. I am thinking of replacing them
but can someone suggest whether it is more likely to be one than the
other? Are there any diagnostics that might pick up intermittent faults?

Hope you can advise

Thanks
J

Check psu as well.

 

[Jenny]

Thanks ...will do.
Event viewer doesn't show anything particularly unusual, though there
are several occurences of IE causing faults. Maybe I should try
Firefox again.
Is there any way of checking the psu without just swapping it for a
new one?

J

 

[Rod Speed]

I have an iWill XP333R motherboard with an Athlon 2100+.
I have been getting blue screens for no apparent reason for ages now
...and regularly when I shut down or do anything processor intensive.
I have swapped the graphics card, RAM and done several clean installs
of my Windows XP pro.

I can only think it's the mobo or the CPU.

Can also be the power supply.

I am thinking of replacing them but can someone suggest
whether it is more likely to be one than the other?

Very unlikely to be the cpu, they usually work fine or stop completely.

Are there any diagnostics that might pick up intermittent faults?

You can run memtest86 to check the ram but there isnt much
point in doing that now that you have tried swapping the ram.

Hope you can advise

Its cheaper and easier to try swapping the power supply next,
particularly now that there are no obvious bad caps on the
motherboard. You can get symptoms like that if the noise level
on one of the rails is well out of spec. There isnt any easy way
to check for that except by substitution with the equipment you
dont have.

 

[kony]

Can also be the power supply.


Very unlikely to be the cpu, they usually work fine or stop completely.

.... unless overheating because the fan is failing, or dust
buildup is choking the heatsink and/or case intake/exhaust
areas, which is quite possible after a few years use.

Otherwise I'll echo what was already written, most likely
motherboard or PSU.

 

[DaveW]

Two facts about CPU's: they very rarely fail, and if they do fail they fail
completely, not sometimes work/sometimes don't.
Motherboards frequently fail. That is most likely what is happening.

 

[Jenny]

I don't think it's overheating as I get blue screens whether I've been
switched on for 5 minutes or five hours. Also my bios temp control
thing seems to be running normally and not reporting anything unusual.

I guess I need to try swapping the psu first then...

Thanks for all your help and suggestions.

Jenny

 

[Rod Speed]

Two facts about CPU's: they very rarely fail, and if they do fail they fail completely, not
sometimes work/sometimes don't.
Correct.

Motherboards frequently fail.

Nope, only occasionally.

 

[paulmd]

Hi,
I have an iWill XP333R motherboard with an Athlon 2100+.
I have been getting blue screens for no apparent reason for ages now
...and regularly when I shut down or do anything processor intensive.
I have swapped the graphics card, RAM and done several clean installs
of my Windows XP pro.
I can only think it's the mobo or the CPU. I am thinking of replacing
them but can someone suggest whether it is more likely to be one than
the other? Are there any diagnostics that might pick up intermittent
faults?

Hope you can advise

Thanks
J

Bulging or leaking capicitors, most likely.

THere is only 1 way to "work around" a capicaitor failure short of
replacing the caps/ motherboard. and it's not a good solution, which is
to use a chip that requires less juice, such as a duron. Depending on
which capictiors failed, of course. Far better to replace the
motherboard.

 

[kony]

Nope, only occasionally.

Has more to do with chassis cooling, environment or
overclocking (as related to heat buildup), or most often a
particular model and revision of board that has a bad
design, capacitor selection or defective capacitors.

In this case, Iwill Xp333 is littered with the known poor
Hermei caps

 

[Rod Speed]

Has more to do with chassis cooling, environment
or overclocking (as related to heat buildup),
Nope.

or most often a particular model and
revision of board that has a bad design,

Not often at all.

capacitor selection or defective capacitors.

Yep, and like I said, thats only occasionally a problem.

In this case, Iwill Xp333 is littered with the known poor Hermei caps

Irrelevant to his general claim.

 

[kony]

Yep, and like I said, thats only occasionally a problem.


Irrelevant to his general claim.

Depends on context. They're not dropping like flies or
anything, but WHEN a system does fail, it is the board a
fairly large percentage of the time even if not a majority.

 

[Rod Speed]

Depends on context.
Nope.

They're not dropping like flies or anything, but
WHEN a system does fail, it is the board a fairly
large percentage of the time even if not a majority.

STILL nothing like his general claim even if it was
only meant to apply to systems which have failed.