I think my MB died.

[Detonate]

Started having problems booting a few weeks ago. Got a lot of {DRDY} errors at boot. Could wait them out and it would eventually boot. Google came up with some bug reports and I tried the solutions suggested to no avail. I ran checks on the disks (one 200GB and one 500GB) and both came up good. SMART says there are no problems with the disks. I swapped the disks around to different ports on the SATA but the problem persisted. Played with different settings in the BIOS, no success there. BIOS is up to date. So I was pretty sure the SATA controller was the problem. Then suddenly yesterday when I tried to boot, the keyboard wasn't working. PS2 keyboard. Tried three different, known to be good keyboards, no luck. This is a three year old MB, MSI with a 939 socket and a AMD Athlon Dual Core 4000+. So I'm looking for a new MB. Problem is, 939 sockets seem to be no longer being produced and I hate to give up a perfectly good processor. And if I am going to have to buy a new MB, and I guess I will have to buy a new CPU also. My current video card is AGP so I will probably have to replace that also. This is getting expensive.

Any thoughts?

[lmilano]

Re: I think my MB died.

Yes,

1. look in the motherboard manual (look online if you lost it). There must be a jumper to reset it all. Maybe that will help.

2. The other thought is possibly static in the circuitry. Maybe turning the computer's power off for a couple hours and powering on again

3. Power source. A bad PSU will screw it all. These are cheap, so it's prolly worth the shot. But if you are a DYI'er, you may wanna buy something decent so you can re-use it in your next build. I wouldn't buy anything less than 550W. A quick check of moco voltages before going this route could be good (the bios may show that).

4. Thermal issues/Cooling. Are all the fans running ? Can you check temps

5. Memory. Reboot in grub and run memtest.

I hope we can save your HW. It's too good to go to waste! Even if nothing else than as a second computer

[Little Girl]

Re: I think my MB died.

Before you do anything else, make sure everything you care about is backed up. The Googling I did on {DRDY} all mentioned a faulty hard drive, so just in case......

This is probably unrelated, but I figured I'd mention it just in case. My son was having intermittent trouble with his CD ROM for a while. Then his keyboard stopped working, although its power LED was lit on boot. It turned out to be a faulty power supply which was causing spikes in the motherboard, which caused random problems. By the time we figured it out, the motherboard had been damaged beyond repair and had to be replaced. In the event that you've got a backup power supply sitting around, you might want to try using that and see if that solves it.

[Qqmike]

Re: I think my MB died.

I agree re the power supply and the other suggestions above.
And, while you are at it, working through all these suggestions, before replacing anything, it wouldn't hurt to check all cable connections--power and data cables--making sure they are tight (e.g., to the HDDs, the main power to the MB and auxiliary if you have one (a 4-pin or a 6-pin), etc.)). Re-seat the memory and graphics card. Re-set BIOS (as suggested by lmilano). Check under the MB for loose parts/screws that may be causing a short.

[Detonate]

Re: I think my MB died.

Thank you for some very good suggestions.

I will run through all of these and report back. This is a home built computer, 550w power supply. I have extra power supplies lying around. As I said, I checked the disk drives before it completely crashed, and they all looked good. Cooling was not and issue, and the voltages reported from the power supply in the bios were all OK, that was before I could no longer get into the bios because the key board does not work. Now I've got to go find that online manual for the MB to see how to reset it.

[dibl]

Re: I think my MB died.

It probably is the mobo. I agree that it's worth swapping in a known good PSU, on the off chance that the old PSU is going wobbly. PSUs can fail in strange ways. But losing the keyboard really sounds like the mobo itself, or at least the interconnections with the support chipset.

FYI, I've had good luck twice with Asus P5 Pro motherboards in the past 6 months. They're not the cheapest in the world, but they're rich in features and seem solid to me.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: I think my MB died.

Hey Detonate... you with me in feeing a little "cheated" by AMD on the whole 939 socket lifecycle?

But anyway, I have two MSI 939's in my home, so if you need me to pull out a manual or open up a case, just ask.

nForce4 Ultra (Neo4?) and whatever the 6150 is called...

I just noticed you are AGP... mine are both PCIE only, so I wouldn't have your exact MB.

[marcopl]

Re: I think my MB died.

detonate ,, what abt the cmos battery.... trying putting in a new one . could be just 2USD.

[Detonate]

Re: I think my MB died.

Mine is in the 7100 series, K8n platinum. I've been working on this all day, and I'm quitting for the night. I got the keyboard back after resetting the CMOS. I can get it to boot reluctantly sometimes. I'm about out of things to try. I've moved the hard drives to different ports, changed the boot order, tried several different options in the kernel line in grub, ran memtest with no errors. One thing I can't do is mount the hard drives in another computer because this is the only sata computer I have. I can hook them to another computer via USB and I will try that tomorrow. When booted, everything seems perfectly normal, just have a difficult time booting. And yes, the short life cycle of the 939 socket sucks.

And yes I plan to change the battery tomorrow.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: I think my MB died.

Actually my 6150 hangs at re-boot quite often. If I switch off power completely, and turn back on, it boots fine. Weird. Good luck. I hope the CMOS bat is the problem.

[Detonate]

Re: I think my MB died.

The battery did not make a difference. Still get those errors at boot, but it will eventually boot. I screwed up my grub badly and had to spend some time fixing that. I have checked everything there is to check that I can think of and the things that have been mentioned. Once booted up. everything works fine. I think I will just leave it on. I do not want to buy a new MB until next year when USB 3.0 arrives.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: I think my MB died.

I just remembered my Neo4 also will give me booting trouble as well. That one I need to not only turn off, but actually turn off the power supply as well... although I do run these two MSIs with a 'poor man's KVM switch' (video into the monitor separately, and keyboard, mouse and printer shared via usb hub), so perhaps that plays into my issues.

[Detonate]

Re: I think my MB died.

I've turned it off, and replaced the power supply with no difference.

[lmilano]

Re: I think my MB died.

Ah, that I missed. Then if it was a bad PS it probably fried your mobo already :-(

[kjjjjshab]

Re: I think my MB died.

I've turned it off, and replaced the power supply with no difference.

I didn't mean that it needed a new power supply, just that perhaps the power supply needed to be completely turned off, as mine does... but since you actually replaced it I guess it would have been completely off at least that one time. Blah, you also said you turned it off.

My Neo4 has a chipset fan that likes to not spin sometimes, but I haven't seen that cause any issues yet (other than of course maybe frying something )