Motherboard Replacement Adventures

This motherboard is toast.

It's been over two weeks since I replaced my motherboard and I'm happy to say all is well. This all started when my computer quietly shut itself off on Shutdown Day, March 24th. I tracked the problem down to a faulty motherboard but I still don't know what triggered the sudden powerdown.

My motherboard was only a couple years old but this caused some trouble for finding a replacement. For those who've poked around in these pervasive boxes before, I had a Socket 939 board with an AGP slot for my graphics card. Now this combination was impossible to find in stores. I could buy a slightly newer motherboard but then I would have to upgrade my graphics card. The problem with that is I'd still be running CPU and RAM that are out-of-date so if either of those died, I would probably have to replace the motherboard again.

This got me thinking, "why not upgrade your CPU and RAM as well?"

"Because it costs more."
"Right. Money."
"Right."

Craigslist to the rescue!

For those of you who haven't encountered Craig's fantabulous list of all things you may or may not want, it's a hugemongous bulletin board. The listings are broken down by city and category making it easy to find things like old motherboards being sold in your city. I checked the list and found two motherboards that would do the trick. I emailed the posters and picked up my new motherboard the next day.

The story doesn't end there, though. The last time I upgraded my motherboard Windows didn't work so I had to re-install it. Of course, this meant I had to phone Microsoft customer support to convince them to give me a new Windows activation key. Once Windows was working I also had to re-install my software and restore all my bookmarks, folders, and whatnot. Ugh. This time, however, Windows XP seemed to cooperate with the new motherboard so I didn't bother with the re-install (or the Microsoft phone call). As I said at the beginning of this post, it's been two weeks and I haven't had any crashes or unusual behaviour. I consider myself lucky, very lucky!