How do I identify a motherboard? My 64 bit system refuses to boot (the two fans come on and stay on), no monitor, nothing. I h

[girldanny]

Motherboard, hard drives, Catch-22

 

[RealBeast]

Open the case and read the painted information on the motherboard, you can usually find pretty much any motherboard identity by Googling some of that data.

 

[girldanny]

Open the case and read the painted information on the motherboard, you can usually find pretty much any motherboard identity by Googling some of that data.

 

[girldanny]

Open the case and read the painted information on the motherboard, you can usually find pretty much any motherboard identity by Googling some of that data.

 

[girldanny]

Open the case and read the painted information on the motherboard, you can usually find pretty much any motherboard identity by Googling some of that data.

 

[girldanny]

The motherboard that I'm trying to identify is a separate one from those in the two towers. I wanted to find out if replacing the motherboard in the 64 bit box (which says HP on the outside, but when it boots up it says it's an e-Machines). I don't really see anything painted on either side of it.

 

[girldanny]

Where would I look, by the FCC compliance mark?

 

[RealBeast]

It could be anywhere on the board, any numbers or letters that are not just port descriptions. It may just be what seems to be an unimportant string of characters.

If it is supposed to be an HP machine is there any kind of label anywhere on the box? In the bios window do a few startups and try to record all the information (other than the drives, etc. -- usually the important stuff is up top in the beginning) as that too can give you a vital clue as to what it is.

 

[girldanny]

It could be anywhere on the board, any numbers or letters that are not just port descriptions. It may just be what seems to be an unimportant string of characters.

If it is supposed to be an HP machine is there any kind of label anywhere on the box? In the bios window do a few startups and try to record all the information (other than the drives, etc. -- usually the important stuff is up top in the beginning) as that too can give you a vital clue as to what it is.

 

[girldanny]

That's the box that won't boot.

 

[girldanny]

That's the box that won't boot.

 

[girldanny]

That's the box that won't boot.

 

[girldanny]

Hey, thanks for the encouragement. It's an ASUS D 33005. I will be back soon with a gazillion more questions.

 

[RealBeast]

Also try looking right next to the first graphic card slot on either side, as ASUS often has a full model number there.

 

[girldanny]

I did look into some of the basics behind the ASUS motherboard. It's a good one, although I don't believe I have enough watts in my power supply to run it. It appears to me that I am going to have to try a hard drive switch. I have Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit on the box that doesn't boot up. I like that OS. Being as my processors are similar, it should work. Then I can use that tower to begin to build anew with the ASUS, bit by bit...lol, I made a funny! Presently all I have to access the Web is my Android. Which is nice but can be frustrating.
Making a switch with my hard drives is possible isn't it?

 

[girldanny]

I did look into some of the basics behind the ASUS motherboard. It's a good one, although I don't believe I have enough watts in my power supply to run it. It appears to me that I am going to have to try a hard drive switch. I have Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit on the box that doesn't boot up. I like that OS. Being as my processors are similar, it should work. Then I can use that tower to begin to build anew with the ASUS, bit by bit...lol, I made a funny! Presently all I have to access the Web is my Android. Which is nice but can be frustrating.
Making a switch with my hard drives is possible isn't it?

 

[RealBeast]

I've never used a switch for hard drives, but I regularly use an IcyDock drive bay (mb971sp-b) like THIS to swap drives that are directly connected to the SATA internal connectors. You would need one 5.25 inch (optical drive) slot to fit it in and it takes both 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives.

 

[girldanny]

I have room in the case for two hard drives, plus connectors to accommodate the same. I would have to change the boot sequence in BIOS set up, righ, ? Provided it co operates and loads. The power of positive thought.
Both drives have two OS's, but that should not matter. Win 7 Ultimate is pretty versatile. I mean in the area of the drivers. I cannot save the necessary drivers and reload them because my power supply went tits up. There is a utility in 7 Ultimate for easy transfer and by-passing the F6 key thingy. I have to do some reading to make sure that I have it on the down low but I believe I am pointed in the proper direction.
Any helpful advise, tips or war stories are welcome and I do listen. Please and thank you.

 

[RealBeast]

I'm a bit confused now. You want to have two drives with two operating systems on each?

What OS other than one x64 Windows 7?

Having a total of 4 OSs on one computer will be a nightmare unless three of them run as virtual machines. Dual boot is about as far as I would recommend and I would let the Windows bootloader control that on startup where you select between the boot options with one as the default if you don't choose.

 

[girldanny]

Well yeah. I prefer Win7 Ultimate, x64. Somewhere on each hard drive is Win XP. It all started when I registered for classes at Riverside Community College last year; one of my classes, Computer Information Systems centered around the Microsoft Office suite 2013...i.e.- Word, Excel, Access, Power Point, etc.. I had (have) a Compac Pressario with an Intel AnthalonXP, Pentium 4 processor. The OS at school, on the other hand, was Windows 7. And the professor wanted everyone's homework/classwork to remain uniform with the instructional program. Makes sense. So, the home owner where I live takes the Compac to some hole in The wall rinky-dink computer joint. It's his system...bla-bla. He doesn't request any system requirements.....bla bla....he's going to have the hard drive changed/up-graded..bla-bla-bla...digital scanner and multi-fax not compatible with Windows 7(as Microsoft is phasing out Windows XP to make way for the broadening horizon of Windows 8)...bla.
Long story short. The Compac returned with a 32bit dinosaur that the system proudly states it original date of 1987. The motherboard in that box only has one pair of memory modules. C'mon...I can bring home all the 64 but homework in the world and the 32 bit sadly enough, is marching to a different drummer.
There's more...I don't want to bore you.

 

[RealBeast]

I don't understand if you can make any changes if it isn't your machine but with Windows 7 Ultimate x64, I would get rid of the XP OS and install XPMode (free from Microsoft, that will run XP in a windows in 7). It will run all your XP only drivers and stuff -- I used it for a while before I merged my main desktop and VMWare Workstation machine, both running 7 Ultimate x64 as the host OS.

As a student if you are up for a little work, you could also install VMWare pretty cheap on your Ultimate x64 machine and have all the OSs you want that will run windowed from DOS to 8 to Linux distros.

I've not had any issues using XPMode or VMWare running XP with any of the old HP 32 bit XP devices requiring TWAIN drivers that Win 7 doesn't support in a network environment, which requires WIA drivers that HP failed to deliver on any old products (understandable as it would be a massive task).