Motherboard failure

[bb193]

I bought a F-S Scaleo P GA-81915PM MCE 2005 in December 2005, from PCWorld (UK). It has been an excellent PC, and we have made good use of the media center facilities. However, last week, the screen went black and the PC would show no sign of life.

I hoped it was the power supply and so I put a new one in. The PC still would not work. I disconnected all the peripherals from the mobo and it still wouldn’t work. I’m pretty sure the motherboard has died. A visual inspection of the motherboard shows no sign of a problem.

As I understand it, the OEM Windows licence means that the OS is only valid on that motherboard or on a replacement provided by the OEM. I was wondering whether there was any way in which F-S would provide a replacement motherboard for this PC, and if so, what the cost for this might be?

[bubblegum]

It would make it easier if you got a replacement mb from FS, but you need to contact the service centre for that. You'll need to search for the number.

I suspect it would be very high. You might do well to check ebay for a second hand mb or even pc. I picked up a scaleo p complete for £107.

You are allowed to make 5? hardware changes, so you could fit a new non FS mb, but you would need to contact microsoft for a license. I think with a non FS mb, the recovery disk would not install.

Describe exactly, what happens. Do you see/hear the psu fan (not the cpu fan) Have you tried a different graphics card? Is the RAM ok.

[bb193]

Many thanks for the reply.

At its simplest, nothing happens. Not even the fan on the power supply turns.

I have removed all the cards (display, TV tuner). I've unplugged all the extras (DVD drives, USB/card reader, disks, ram etc etc), so there is nothing connected to the mobo apart from the power supply (and the CPU fan). Still nothing.

I'm pretty sure it isn't the power supply. If I hotwire the power supply, the fan turns. I have bought and tried a second new power supply. It still does nothing.

If you think I might have missed anything, or there is anything else for me to test, I'd be very keen to know.

Thanks

[bb193]

OK, so the motherboard was dead. I contacted F-S parts and the replacement MB would have been £120 inc. VAT. Unfortunately, this didn't inc the processor (has mine died? how do I know?). The processor was another £280 (even the very helpful guy on the phone said 'silly money')! For £400, I could get a completely new Vista base unit with Win 7 upgrade!

So I bought a low cost MB replacement from Maplin, installed it and then installed the MCE OS. It said it needed registering over the internet - which I did and it said it was successful! No problem at all! I have heard a rumour that MS keep a list of OS/MB registrations for just 5 months. If so, that seems pretty reasonable to me - thank you MS!

Now for the one remaining problem. The F-S drivers disk now won't run, as it says it needs to be on a F-S PC (which the MB no longer is). This doesn't present too much of a problem - apart from the OEM version of WinDVD5 on the disk, which I need to playback MCE recorded TV. If I try to run it directly from the disk, it asks for a licence key - which I haven't got.

Anyone got any idea if F-S would be willing for me to use this WinDVD5 software and if so, how I get the licence key?

[bubblegum]

Forget Windvd. Get VLC player, its better.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[bb193]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I downloaded the windows version and installed it. I was expecting to see a new decoder in the Windows XP decoder checkup facility - but nothing was listed.

I ran the media player software and it played a file - but the sound was a long way out of sync with the video. I guess I'm doing something wrong?

[bubblegum]

I assume you have installed the chipset, audio & graphics drivers downloaded from the FS website.

Are you trying to play an avi file? & have you tried to play a DVD?

VLC player should play both.

I assume you have installed Anti virus s/w.

[bb193]

Thanks for the reply.

The F-S motherboard was dead, so I had had to replace it. I have all the drivers for the replacement motherboard.

I was trying to play an MCE recorded file - dvr-ms. I got the sync problem from within the VLC application.

However, there didn't seem to be any way of telling MCE to choose the associated decoder, as it didn't appear in the Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en ), so I don't really see how it can be used within MCE?

[bubblegum]

There is a trial version of Windvd 9 http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... bview=tab0

I'm not sure if this will work. I found this info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVR-MS

If I understand correctly, if the file is copyrighted, then you can only play this on the original recording device. (your pc with the old mb)

I googled for DVR ms converter

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q= ... GGLL_en-GB

perhaps one of these can help.

I also found this Do you have any mega codecs install? On my computer after installing either one Ace or K Lite my media centre did not work properly so I uninstall it and now I use All in One Codec and the media centre is ok.The last try you may go to a restore point a day or two before but before you do that install Sherlock from this site and it’s a real codecs detective.It’s going to check your computer and to tell you if some codecs are broken.Use search on site and find it:http://www.free-codecs.com/

Let me know how you get on.

[bb193]

The original PC had XP Media Center, which I really like. I'm not really looking for replacement Media Center software. Sometime soon, I'll upgrade to Xp/Win 7, but I just hoped I'd get slightly more out of the Scaleo I bought.

XP needs a DVD decoder to function correctly (Vista/Win 7 have it built in). F-S provided WinDVD 5 for this PC to work with MCE, it worked well and I really just wanted to see if I could get it to work on the repaired F-S PC.

I do have Nero 7 which provides a DVD decoder. This works but has problems that WinDVD5 didn't have. However, it does show that there is no problem playing these files on the new Motherboard. They are not protected in any way.

I guess I could buy new DVD decoder software. However, if I'm going to spend, I think I'll probably just buy a Vista/Win7 upgrade and get the DVD decoder that comes with that.

Thanks for your help.