Can you get my (once decent) PC working again....

October 1, 2008 9:49 AM

Can you help me get my PC back in working order?

Hello Hivemind!

My 3 year old XP PC died about a year ago - I believe from a power surge that broke the motherboard. Getting the board repaired will cost £60 minimum. I think it's probably worth upgrading instead and buying a new motherboard (and processor and memory).

[Question 1]
Any suggestions for what to upgrade to? I'm looking at spending around £150 for the three (mobo, CPU, memory) and obviously want quality and decent performance. (A dual core 2.8Gig AMD set up has been suggested to me)

[Question 2]
I've lost my XP disk! I have no idea about how to get all the data from my 2 harddrives onto the new set up - 'cos my original XP's doomed, right? Is it possible with a different copy of XP? Would an Ubuntu install recognise XP harddrives the my data? Any ideas?

Any help much appreciated.....

Thanks! ;)

These are the important parts of my PC.

Asus P5ND2 SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi PCI-Express Motherboard (broken)
Intel Pentium 4 630 "LGA775 Prescott" 3.0GHz (800FSB)
Corsair 1GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x512MB)
Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB)
XFX Geforce 6600GT PCI-E 128mb DDR3 TV
2 * Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache – OEM

posted by RufusW to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: 2. Your installation of WinXP might not be doomed quite yet. Try plugging your old hard drives into your next motherboard, then power everything on and see if Windows will come up. This might not work if you're using certain flavors of WinXP that check for changes in the underlying hardware, but it's worth a shot. If it doesn't work, then yes, Ubuntu should see your hard drives and allow you to copy data from them.
posted by xbonesgt at 10:16 AM on October 1, 2008

Best answer: Your PC wont boot up if you just changed motherboards, especially going from a pentium to a AMD one. Sometimes you can get lucky if the motherboards are closely related, but the architecture change and dual-cores will not work.

What you need to do is get an XP disc and licence and do a "repair install." This will reinstall windows while keeping your data and settings.

Before you do this you must back up your data somewhere. Yes, get an Ubuntu boot disc (do not install it, do not partition anything, do not format anything) and you can view you drives in Ubuntu. You can then begin copy your files to a safe location, like an external drive.

Now that all your stuff is safe you can do the windows repair install.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:31 AM on October 1, 2008

Its also worth noting that a lightning strike can damage more than just the motherboard. So, some of those components might also be fried. Best to test them in a known good PC beforehand.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:33 AM on October 1, 2008

Best answer: Any suggestions for what to upgrade to? I'm looking at spending around £150 for the three (mobo, CPU, memory) and obviously want quality and decent performance. (A dual core 2.8Gig AMD set up has been suggested to me)

For stretching your performance dollar, I'd suggest switching to AMD, here are some specific parts recommendations (I don't know much about UK retailers, so these prices are just from Google UK Products searches):

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ for £49
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H for £40
RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400 (2x1GB) for £30

That MB is not SLI like your current one but SLI will be a bit more expensive. I saw a Gigabyte M750SLi-DS4 for £65. I would recommend spending money on a faster processor or more RAM before the SLI board, though, in terms of general performance boost.
posted by camcgee at 3:23 PM on October 1, 2008

Response by poster: Excellent, thank you guys, all good answers......
posted by RufusW at 2:47 AM on October 2, 2008