Replacing Pavilion p6210y PC motherboard
Albert
One of our RV chapter members has a HP PC that the motherboard
cratered. (According to Best Buy's geek squad). I tested the power
supply and it seems to be okay so we ordered a new motherboard which
will be in Monday.
Other than serial numbers it will be identical to the original as it
will be an OEM motherboard. Near as I can figure all we'll have to do
is just swap motherboards and it should boot (which it will not do
now)? If not could someone point us in the right direction?
thank you ahead of time,
Albert
Windows 7 Home
Pavilion p6210y PC
AMD Athlon II 620 Quad-Core
NVIDIA Geforce 9100 Integrated
Motherboard:
PEGATRON
M2N78-LA
CT:PAVEA 2C 0Z Y3 CSL
PN: 513430-002 Rev C02
Motherboard as ordered:
HP Pegatron M2N78-LA ASUS OEM Violet6-GL8E NVIDIA 9100 AM3 Motherboard
Alias
If it's the same motherboard, it should boot just fine assuming that the
only problem is the motherboard. Course some idiot may come along and
tell you that you need to buy a new license because the motherboard is
what determines if it's a "new" computer or not. Ignore them.
--
Alias
Jan Alter
news:4e0725d7$1...@news.x-privat.org...
Too often I've found that 'testing a power supply' does not mean the same
thing to everyone. So, if the new mb does not power up don't rule out that
it could still be the power supply. I'm not trying to be negative here, just
suggesting that power supplies can be extremely flaky and that there is more
than one way to test them to get false positive results. And I do hope that
the mb replacement solves the problem for you.
--
Jan Alter
bea...@verizon.net
SC Tom
"Albert" <aml...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5d4e075crstiovg70...@4ax.com...
With them both being the same MB (other than S/N), you should have no
problems with just swapping them and booting. You may get a "Found new
hardware" message (especially if the MB's are different revisions), but I
wouldn't think you'd need to reinstall the OS. You may have to re-activate,
but that's no biggie, either. I have done this same operation on HP servers
(running Windows Server 200X) and Dell workstations (running XP Pro) with no
problems at all.
If possible, remove the hard drive, put it in another PC, and create an
image of it. That way, if something unforeseen happens, you'll have an image
to work from. On my work computers, I had daily backups and/or images just
in case, but fortunately, never had to use them for this type of operation.
But then, Murphy's Law, you know ;-)
--
SC Tom
Albert
wrote:
I bought an Antec power supply tester and all voltages are correct.
Also the computer as it is now when I hit the on button all the fans
work and if I swap the power supply between the hard drive and a DVD
player, the player works (opens) with either lead.
Albert
Albert
I do have the capability to put his hard drive in my computer and do a
clone with Casper but he is not willing to buy a replacement hard
drive. On my computer I do a daily backup using Casper and there's
been a couple of times that I've had to use it and it's great. Either
drives are bootable. I just upgraded to Casper 7.0 that can be
scheduled.
Albert
SC Tom
If either one of you has an external USB/Firewire/eSATA drive, he doesn't
have to spring for another drive; an image can be created on the external,
then (if necessary) be restored to the drive he has now. No need to clone
it, since he doesn't want to spend the extra bucks for an extra drive.
--
SC Tom
VanguardLH
Obviously any non-default settings in the BIOS will be lost. Since you
cannot boot the dead mobo, you can't review its BIOS settings to see
what might've been changed.
Kirk Bubul
Some years ago, I have an Asus motherboard go bad during the warranty
period. When the replacement motherboard came, it was an identical
part number. I thought that swapping out the bad board with the new
one would be simple. I don't remember what was incorrect, but it took
some work to get the new board to work properly, but it wasn't a
complete reinstall.
(BTW, my current computer is an HP e9120y with that exact same
Pegatron motherboard.)
Paul
Being an OEM board, the BIOS should be simplified. It likely won't have
nearly the quantity of settings of the retail equivalent Asus motherboard.
One danger you can find, is the ACPI setting. I have a motherboard, which
defaults to a bad choice for ACPI. The other day, I pulled that machine
out of storage, and as usual, the CMOS battery was flat and the settings
were deleted. The BIOS comes up in "defaults". I took a quick glance
through the settings, but missed one.
On boot, Windows changed the HAL from ACPI Uniprocessor to Standard PC.
When I went to shut down Windows, I got the Windows 98 "It is Safe to turn
Off..." message, and that's when I knew I was screwed.
Long story short, I ended up doing a Repair Install. (Apparently, you
can manually move several files and fix it, but by then it was too late
to do that. I'd already broken the thing and it wouldn't boot.)
So your warning about the BIOS is a good one. While a BIOS mis-setting,
such as screwing up the boot order, is easily recoverable (just fix it),
some other setting are more trouble. Set "ACPI Standard" to 2.0,
"MPS" to 1.4 (if available), and the Standby setting to Auto or "S1&S3".
While you could try to find the user manual, for the equivalent
retail Asus motherboard, there is no guarantee it'll be similar
enough to tell you everything. This is roughly the same vintage,
but not very close to being the same motherboard.
ftp://ftp.asus.com/pub/asus/mb/socketAM2/M3N78/e3885_m3n78_manual.zip
Suspend Mode [Auto] (Likely to support Standby suspend to RAM)
ACPI 2.0 Support [Enable] Default is Disable, change it to Enable
ACPI APIC [Enable] APIC is good, so Enable.
In Section 2.3.6 "Storage Configuration", there is a SATA Mode setting.
Getting this wrong could give an "Inaccessible Boot Device" blue screen.
Enter the BIOS and try another setting.
SATA Mode select [SATA Mode] Most likely for a Win2K or WinXP
[AHCI Mode] Most likely for a Vista or Win7
vintage of computer (as shipped from
the factory)
By "most likely", this is a function of how sophisticated the user is,
and how many changes they've made to the system. It may be possible
the OS was installed on a RAID pair of disks, in which case "most
likely" isn't right. A user may have started with the OEM WinXP on
the machine, and installed Win7 in its place, and changed the BIOS
settings, so there are many possibilities. But you can likely
play with that setting, until the thing boots.
HTH,
Paul
VanguardLH
> One danger you can find, is the ACPI setting. I have a motherboard, which
> defaults to a bad choice for ACPI.
Does that mean it defaults the older APM (Advanced Power Management)
scheme instead of the newer ACPI scheme?
> So your warning about the BIOS is a good one. While a BIOS mis-setting,
> such as screwing up the boot order, is easily recoverable (just fix it),
> some other setting are more trouble.
Another problem that I've seen is that the SATA controller is bridged
(don't remember the exact hardware setup) which meant there was no SATA
support unless the separate BIOS for SATA RAID (which is still inside
the same EEPROM but enabled and configured separately) was enabled.
Although it looks like something to do with RAID, it's the SATA support
(you just don't define any RAID setup). If not enabled, the SATA disks
cannot be found. I turned it off once and, boom, no more SATA disk;
however, since I just made the one change, I knew what they problem
popped up. That was for an old mobo. However, unlike the corruption
caused by replacing the wrong HAL (hardware abstraction layer) for
Windows because the wrong power scheme was set in BIOS, this is a rather
non-destructive setting. It's just infuriating to find out that you
need to enable SATA RAID to get at non-RAID'ed SATA disks (to access the
OS installed there).
If I've modified (for tweaking or required for proper operation) the
BIOS settings, and if it's my personal computer (not one of many that I
work on or have to maintain), I'll probably remember what were my
changed settings. So on a same-mobo replace, I'd probably instinctively
go into the BIOS on first bootup to go check the settings there and see
if something strikes me as "Oh yeah, I changed that."
In really old mobos, the EEPROMs were socketed. They're soldered on
now, so no quick-change to swap the chips (assuming there was no version
change in the mobo which usually means changes to the hardware which
could be trivial or critical).
gordonlw
the mobo (Pegatron M2N78-LA) should be recalled! the northbridge is the
culprit. do a google search for the make and model and you will see
your client is not alone. replacing with another Pegatron M2N78-LA will
only be a temporary fix.