Problem Solving:Hardware

Diagnosing And Fixing

Motherboard Faults
Modern PC motherboards are very modular in their design, and so easily accessible.
Anyone with a basic understanding of how they work should be able to diagnose and
repair basic motherboard-related faults on a PC.

By Bryan Betts

W hen a PC fails or exhibits in-

termittent faults, the first re-
sort is often to send for a
specialist engineer. Yet there is a lot
a good idea to keep a spare power
supply handy, as it’s not unusual for
them to burn out completely or for the
fan to fail. Removing the case from a
tor yourself. Taking the case off a
monitor exposes you to voltages that
can kill, and it’s best left to a specialist
who knows which areas are safe to
that PC support staff with the right power supply normally involves re- touch. Remember that, because of the
level of competence and under- moving four small screws to expose high capacitance of a monitor, those
standing can do to filter out easily- the circuit board. There’s nothing on lethal voltages can exist even if the
fixed problems, leaving only those that the board that you can fix, but it’s monitor has been turned off for many
absolutely require the services of a pro- worth looking at the board in order to hours.
fessional repair-shop. Failure of a sock- check for obvious signs of damage The next step is to remove all the
eted part is one thing, but replacing a such as a blown fuse or some gunge expansion cards and disconnect the
surface mounted component normally leaking from the large cylindrical ca- hard and floppy drives to see if they
demands specialist equipment. pacitors. are holding the power rails down.
Never replace a blown fuse on a (With EISA systems, make a note of
Record-Keeping power supply. If the fuse blows, it has which boards were in which slots to
probably blown for a good reason avoid the need to rebuild the system
When you’re diagnosing faults, it is (such as one of the PSU components configuration later.) If the system
important to keep a record of what you burning out). Replacing the fuse is starts to boot without the drives at-
have done. If nothing else, this will dangerous, and can also damage com- tached, re-attach them one by one until
help a specialist later on if you are not ponents on the PC’s motherboard. Fit it no longer boots, to see which is the
able to fix the system yourself. In addi- a new power supply instead - they problem. Known-good cables should
tion, it is vital to know what was hap- don’t cost more than around US$30. also be tried with the drives, while the
pening when the problem occurred, Assuming the power supply checks reset and other switches should be dis-
particularly with intermittent faults. out, try a different monitor. Maybe the connected, in case they are causing
As long as the PC is still in its case, PC is working fine, but the monitor is problems. Leave the speaker con-
static safety shouldn’t be a problem, broken. If this turns out to be the case, nected - those beeps might be your
but ideally you should ground your- you should not attempt to fix the moni- only clue as to where the fault lies.
self with a static strap attached to the
wrist and earthed to the workbench
(which itself should be earthed). Fail-
ure to take the necessary precautions
can cause intermittent faults and/or
“When you’re diagnosing faults, it is
damage components on the mother-
board.
important to keep a record of what you
have done. If nothing else, this will help
Starting Work
Does the PC do anything at all or is
a specialist later on if you are not able
it dead? If you have a dead PC, the first
thing to check is obviously the power
to fix the system yourself. In addition,
supply. Is the fan running? If it is, is the
power connection to the motherboard
it is vital to know what was happening
OK? Most PSUs connect to the mother- when the problem occurre.”d
board with two connectors, with the
black cables meeting in the middle. It’s

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Problem Solving:Hardware

Physical Checks
A visual check of the motherboard “If the floppy disk light ever remains
should look for discoloured compo-
nents and other obvious signs of over- permanently active after you’ve put the
heating. Socketed components should
be carefully pressed down to make machine back together, this is a sure sign
sure they are securely seated - this is
particularly important if the system that you’ve plugged in the floppy drive
has failed after being moved. Ensure
too that they do not have bent legs: connector the wrong way round.”
these can cause intermittent failures if
they make contact to begin with but go
open circuit as the system warms up.
After this, the processor and mem- normally beep when it completes its the crystal or the capacitors around it.
ory can be swapped for known-good power-on self test (POST). Most sys- It should typically be producing a fre-
equivalents, ensuring that the proces- tems also have a range of other recog- quency in the region of 14 MHz which
sor clock speed jumpers are correctly nisable beep codes to report certain is then multiplied up by other circuitry
set and that the memory is the correct faults. A list of these should be sup- to the PC’s bus frequency.
speed and compatible with the board. plied in the motherboard or system If the board fails to beep at all, and
Wrongly setting the BIOS jumpers can manual and is essential for fault find- the processor and BIOS have been re-
in some cases wipe a Flash EPROM, so ing. placed and verified, it may mean that
the BIOS should be verified by swap- A high-impedance oscilloscope can the processor cannot access the BIOS.
ping it with a known-good chip. be used to check that the clock is work- In this case, a major fault such as a
If the BIOS is OK, the system will ing, by probing onto the underside of broken PCB track or a loose SMT com-
ponent should be suspected, and the
board will need specialist analysis and
The Toolkit repair.
Alongside screwdrivers and the like, the PC engineer’s toolkit should
include the following: Subsystem Faults
If the POST beep is present and the
● A good software test suite such as PC-Check, Checkit or QA+. disk access light is active but nothing
● Serial and parallel loopback connectors. appears on the screen, a video fault is
● Multimeter. possible. (Incidentally, if the floppy
● Known-good components, including processors, SIMMs and batteries, disk light ever remains permanently
plus video, IDE and serial/parallel cards. active after you’ve put the machine
● Anti-static wrist strap. back together, this is a sure sign that
you’ve plugged in the floppy drive
An oscilloscope is useful but probably overkill - the sort of problems it connector the wrong way round.)
can locate will probably require specialist equipment to fix, anyway. If the screen is indeed blank, the
on-board video should be disabled and
a known-good video card installed in-
Checklist stead. (Again, keep a known-good
● Start with the power supply. Ensure that it’s working, and that it’s video card in your spares box. They
supplying power to the motherboard. don’t cost more than $50, and it saves
● Next, try a different monitor. having to take someone else’s machine
● Remove all expansion cards. If the machine boots, replace the cards one apart to borrow their video card.)
by one until it doesn’t. The video subsystem comes in two
● Check motherboard for signs of blow components. parts: the controller generates the digi-
● Try swapping the CPU with a known-good one. tal image, and the DAC (digital to ana-
● If the video controller is built in, disable it and try another video card. logue converter) turns this into the
● Buy or borrow a POST card. analogue signal understood by the
● Check the CPU fan. monitor.
● Check the RAM chips by replacing them with known-good ones. If there are synch signals present
● Disable external cache. but no output, the DAC may have
● Remember to keep a record of everything you do. failed. If there is no synch signal a con-
● Take anti-static precautions. troller problem is more likely. A blown
DAC will get hot, but testing for this

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 Problem Solving:Hardware

Motherboard Faults

needs caution as failed chips can be hot

enough to burn flesh. In any case, some
modern video chipsets combine the “Faulty joints or components can also
DAC and controller, making fault-
finding harder. make the system hang as it warms up and
A DPMS power-managed monitor
could be useful as it will usually indi- causes them to expand and go open-
cate, either with an on-screen message
or by varying the colour or blink pat- circuit, but testing for this requires a
tern of the power LED, whether it is
receiving synch signals or not. temperature chamber and is a specialist job.”
Keyboard Fuse
A common problem is the keyboard erboard to the same fault again, unless and can be used to identify the results
fuse, which often blows if a keyboard you fix it first (eg, by replacing the being produced by the self-test rou-
is plugged in or removed when the PC keyboard or remembering not to plug tine.
is running. The keyboard fuse is usu- it in while the PC is running). If the POST card shows FF, an oscil-
ally a subminiature surface-mounted loscope can be used to see if the proc-
component that is not immediately Send A Postcard essor is accessing the BIOS, looking for
recognisable as such. Look for some- clock signals, the address and data
thing labelled F1 or F2 and located near A useful diagnostic tool is a POST strobes on the CPU, and for resets.
the keyboard connector (on the moth- card, though good versions are hard to
erboard, not in the PC). The best way come by and you should be wary of No Clock
to test it is with a multimeter or with a paying too much for one that you have
spare keyboard - if the keyboard lights not had a chance to evaluate. PCs send Real-time clock (RTC) failure can be
flash as the system powers on, the fuse their POST results out on a particular fixed fairly simply, by replacing the
is OK. I/O port - most use port 80, while battery or, if it is a combined clock/bat-
As always, don’t replace the fuse Compaqs may use port 84 and IBMs tery unit, by replacing the whole mod-
unless you have a pretty good idea of use 300. The POST card, which plugs ule. However, if this would require
why it blew in the first place. The into the ISA bus, decodes these signals soldering, it should not be attempted:
whole idea of the fuse blowing is to and displays them either on a set of motherboards contain heavy ground
protect the other components. Replac- LEDs or a seven-segment numeric dis- planes that require a lot of heat to be
ing it will expose the rest of the moth- play. A list of POST codes is needed, applied very quickly to avoid damage.
If this heat is applied too slowly, the
longer exposure to it can burn the
board.
It is also important to replace the
battery with the correct type. Some PCs
use non-rechargeable Lithium cells
and others rechargeable NiCads, and
if the former is substituted for the latter
an explosion could result.
Some clock modules allow you to
simply connect a standard household
battery or two (eg, as used in a Walk-
man) to override the exhausted built-in
battery. However, you normally need
to set a jumper before doing this. If you
are in any doubt, don’t do it.

Intermittent Faults
Intermittent faults are the hardest to
detect. If the system runs for a while
but then halts, check the CPU fan. If
this has failed the CPU will overheat
until its thermal cut-out shuts it down.
Although this cut-out protects the chip

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Problem Solving:Hardware

to some extent, continued attempts to

use the system in this state may cause
thermal damage to the processor chip. “Once the base system is working, the
Unfortunately, CPU fans seem to
burn out with alarming regularity. Be expansion cards can be put back one
sure to keep one or two in your spares
box, along with some of that special at a time. However, before doing this
heat-conducting glue to fix them to the
CPU chip itself. the test and diagnosis software should
Faulty joints or components can
also make the system hang as it warms be run to determine the free I/O space
up and causes them to expand and go
open-circuit, but testing for this re- and resources on the PC.”
quires a temperature chamber and is a
specialist job. It is possible to diagnose
some faults of this kind by bending the
board but this is highly inadvisable as needs to be tested with diagnostic soft- I/O space and resources on the PC.
it can cause more problems by break- ware, as a memory parity error will These programs will not find problems
ing components, joints and tracks. For cause the system to hang, usually with such as timing errors but can prove
a long life the board should be prop- a warning message. You also need to base system functionality. Loopback
erly supported and kept well cooled. check that the memory fitted matches connectors for the serial and parallel
A motherboard that boots and then the specifications laid down by the ports are another essential diagnostic
hangs may have cache problems, in board or system manufacturer and is tool needed here. If built-in ports or
which case the level 1 and 2 cache compatible. Adding a wait state in the controllers are faulty it may be possible
should be disabled in the BIOS. Cache CMOS set-up may alleviate a memory to disable them and fit a card instead.
problems show more often when boot- timing problem. Check also whether
ing from the floppy drive. If the prob- the motherboard supports or requires
lem goes away, the caches can then be parity memory, and whether this is
re-enabled one at a time to see where indeed fitted.
the fault lies. Alternatively, if the sys- Once the base system is working,
tem will not boot from floppy, this can the expansion cards can be put back
be a sign of component failure or a dry one at a time. However, before doing
joint on the motherboard. this the test and diagnosis software
If the cache is OK, the main memory should be run to determine the free

PCSA

The Author
Bryan Betts (bryan@cix.co.uk) is a
freelance writer on IT issues. Our
thanks to Piyuskumar Shah at Re-
sponse Computer Maintenance
(+44 181 965 322) for their help
with this article.

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