How I can do a dianostic to my mother board?

Question

My computer crash and my hard drive not work and the light to indicate my hard drive is working is permanent on.. not blink... I bring my computer to a shop in circuit city and they said can be the mother board but they can't do anything for it.

Answer 1

It's very hard to diagnose your motherboard by some 'tools', eventough you can diagnose and know what IC was 'broken' or need to replace, you still can't fix it. there's no body sell that IC except your motherboard manufacture.

To diagnose motherboard, we use 'Trial and Error' technique. replace all component like memory, cpu, sound card, vga with the 'good' one.
We can hear the BIOS beep to predict what's wrong with our CPU.
You can detach all HD and CD cable data first. Turn on your PC and hear the beep, one beep, means OK, Long-short-long-short beep maybe said 'Memory' is broken or missing, then we try to replace the 'Memory'.
If you have replace all the component with the good one, and the problem still exists, it's mean, your motherboard is broken.
That's my friend, what we call 'Trial and Error'.

Sometimes, the HD Led not blink and working permanent, it's mean there's conflict betwen your HD and other HD or CD-Rom.
try to look the jumper of your HD and CD-Rom, put one to master and the other to slave. Turn it on, see if working.

Hope this usefull for you

Answer 2

Mobo manufacturers have a multimillion dollar machine that does the diagnostics. The reason the light is not functioning properly is that it is plugged into the wrong outlet on the mobo. Check online for the manual for that mobo and it will tell you where all the LEDs plug into on the mobo.