If you have this motherboard (or a variant) you need to check your caps. My caps leaked and took out the mobo, video card and sound card!
Details:
Mobo---Epox 8K3A+ s/n 020313001189 purchased in 4/02 (not how to decipher the build date}
PSU--Antec 350 Smart Power
Sound Card-SB Audigy
Video- MSI Mx 440 (fortunetly a cheap card compared to what you may have)
Initail symptoms:
-Display was artifacting (random binary symbols being displayed) on boot process only. No symptoms after Windows XP loaded.
-After a few days of suspecting a boot virus-sound card would not work. Once again I suspected some kind of driver worm.
-Artifacting became more prevalent-boot only.
-Unable to flash bios due to checksum error.
-After 4-5 days machine did not boot.
With the Mobo dead it was time to take a closer look. Sure enough all of the 6.3v 1000uf caps (the middle sized caps) were bulged or leaking. Leaking was on the top apparent by a whitish powdery substance.
With mobo out, I could read the cap specs and the green and gold label GSC.
Contacted EPOX support (they have a registration process) and they issued a RMA very promptly. Sent the board in. I am awaiting it's return to see if they are just going to replace the bad caps, send a new board or replace all the caps.
I must say that EPOX has been very very responsive and the motherboard has been an excellent board. I just got a mobo with bad caps in which EPOX and many others are victims (I guess we are the real victims) of the bad formula.
Not being able to wait for the board to be returned I decided to buy a new board and processor. Installed the new board and processor.
Installed the video card only to determine that the video card got taken out with the mobo. Bought a new video card.
System booted with new card and did a repair XP install.
Went through the Microsoft reactivation issues ( a differnt topic but, beware that when you change your mobo and do a repair or fresh install your registry gets changed and you may have to reactivate the o/s and other MS apps-very time consuming).
Went to install SB Audigy only to find out that that got taken out too. Using the new mobo sound for now.
Bottom line-If you have any board that is less than 3 years old check your caps now before you lose your video card and sound card.
If your display is showing any signs of artifacting-shut down your system NOW and check your caps. If it is not your caps, you will have time to check for software/virus issues. If it is your caps, you will risk losing components that may cost you significantly more than your motherboard.
Final note, if you do have bad caps, and change motherboards be reminded that any MS XP oem version software is typically good your old motherboard only. You may need to buy a new version of XP to be able to use your new motherboard.
I typically don't post messages like this-but I could not have solved my problems without forums like this one. I hope someone finds this useful and is able to avoid days of researching a solving problems that resulted from $3 worth of capacitors that end up costing $300 or more in new components.
Details:
Mobo---Epox 8K3A+ s/n 020313001189 purchased in 4/02 (not how to decipher the build date}
PSU--Antec 350 Smart Power
Sound Card-SB Audigy
Video- MSI Mx 440 (fortunetly a cheap card compared to what you may have)
Initail symptoms:
-Display was artifacting (random binary symbols being displayed) on boot process only. No symptoms after Windows XP loaded.
-After a few days of suspecting a boot virus-sound card would not work. Once again I suspected some kind of driver worm.
-Artifacting became more prevalent-boot only.
-Unable to flash bios due to checksum error.
-After 4-5 days machine did not boot.
With the Mobo dead it was time to take a closer look. Sure enough all of the 6.3v 1000uf caps (the middle sized caps) were bulged or leaking. Leaking was on the top apparent by a whitish powdery substance.
With mobo out, I could read the cap specs and the green and gold label GSC.
Contacted EPOX support (they have a registration process) and they issued a RMA very promptly. Sent the board in. I am awaiting it's return to see if they are just going to replace the bad caps, send a new board or replace all the caps.
I must say that EPOX has been very very responsive and the motherboard has been an excellent board. I just got a mobo with bad caps in which EPOX and many others are victims (I guess we are the real victims) of the bad formula.
Not being able to wait for the board to be returned I decided to buy a new board and processor. Installed the new board and processor.
Installed the video card only to determine that the video card got taken out with the mobo. Bought a new video card.
System booted with new card and did a repair XP install.
Went through the Microsoft reactivation issues ( a differnt topic but, beware that when you change your mobo and do a repair or fresh install your registry gets changed and you may have to reactivate the o/s and other MS apps-very time consuming).
Went to install SB Audigy only to find out that that got taken out too. Using the new mobo sound for now.
Bottom line-If you have any board that is less than 3 years old check your caps now before you lose your video card and sound card.
If your display is showing any signs of artifacting-shut down your system NOW and check your caps. If it is not your caps, you will have time to check for software/virus issues. If it is your caps, you will risk losing components that may cost you significantly more than your motherboard.
Final note, if you do have bad caps, and change motherboards be reminded that any MS XP oem version software is typically good your old motherboard only. You may need to buy a new version of XP to be able to use your new motherboard.
I typically don't post messages like this-but I could not have solved my problems without forums like this one. I hope someone finds this useful and is able to avoid days of researching a solving problems that resulted from $3 worth of capacitors that end up costing $300 or more in new components.