On 28/09/2011 22:24, Dave Headley wrote:

I put it all together on the bench, powered up, and we now have signs of
life - but it's now in a BSOD loop. It POSTs OK and it gives one BIOS
beep as it normally would but then blue screens and reboots ad
infinitum, with an odd different BSOD thrown in for good measure. I sent
that mobo back under warranty and got another one, but this one also
displays EXACTLY the same symptoms, leading me to believe that the first
mobo I got from him wasn't actually faulty after all.

ok, do you get the boot loop without a hard drive connected? i.e. is it
actually failing in the BIOS itself?

Or is it as I expect, that it fails very shortly after attempting to
start windows?

That would imply that it's the CPU at fault but I don't have a spare
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 lying around to test it with, and the cheapest I
can find is 65 quid for a used one on Ebay (brand new ones are over 100)
so I don't particularly want to go down that route.

Do you have a bootable CD you can test it with? A linux live CD, a copy
of the ultimate boot CD, or Bart PE etc. If not, download and burn one
on a working machine, and set the BIOS to allow booting from CD and give
it a go. If any of those work, then chances are the processor is fine.

Plus the fact that I've now got some diagnostic software (PC Check) and,
as you'll see in these photos here, the motherboard and processor pass
all tests

http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q...ackard%20Bell/

Those pictures are all too small to read anything useful... but the last
two do look like windows kernel panics (i.e. BSODs)

So, where do I go from here? Is the diagnostic software accurate or
could there still be problems with mobo/CPU? What can I do now? Please
help before I tear all my hair out :-)

If you can boot ok from a CD, then I expect you have a basic hardware
incompatibility (possibly even a HAL incompatibility) between the
windows image on the hard drive, and the new motherboard. You can
usually fix this by booting from the windows CD and doing an inplace
repair install. This should leave all data and programs intact, but
re-detect and install all the lower level drivers that can prevent a
system from booting.

IME, sometimes you can pull a fast one a swap a mobo under windows, and
it does not complain, just notices stuff is new, and detects and
reinstalls the right drivers. Other times it does what you are seeing at
some stage in the boot process ranging from almost immediately, half way
in...

--
Cheers,

John.

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