Metropol

OK, technical query for technically minded people.

I'm trying to rescue a PC presented to me as faulty. It's used to run a PC-based CCTV system, all that's fitted are a single SATA hard disk, a single IDE DVD drive, a PCIe graphics card, and the PCI capture card itself.

The problem presented was that the keyboard wasn't working and the DVR software wouldn't load, and changing the keyboard did nothing. Closer examination has revealed that the PS/2 keyboard port has somehow died. However, the system runs fine from a USB keyboard.

So, I've done a clean re-install with Windows 2000. One problem though - the DVR card isn't recognised. Not just a drivers problem, it's not in device manager as anything, it's not even on the 'PCI Device Listing' section on the BIOS. I've put the card in another machine to rule out a fault with it, but am getting nothing from this machine. Trying different slots has done nothing either.

More curiously than that, it would appear that *no* PCI cards fitted into the system are detected, but the PCI bus must be working because various integrated peripherals like the onboard LAN and sound run off of it and they're detected and working fine.

Nothing obvious looked wrong in the BIOS, but I did a 'load failsafe defaults' just to be sure, and the system is running as solid as a rock - I've had it going for most of the afternoon with no problems at all.

Coupled with the faulty PS/2 port, am I in fact looking at a dying motherboard here or is it likely to be some weird configuration problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've promised to deliver it back working by tomorrow!

do you need any chipset drivers for mainboard?

if not, then i'd reset the cmos to the defaults (either by the jumper or by removing the battery) and see if that helps.

i'd also take out all the cards out and stick one in at a time and see if it's a dodgy card that's causing the fault (you can also try sticking in a known working card with nothing else installed and see if that works).

other than that, if that doesn't help then it is most likely that your mainboard is broken.

It's not just a dirty slot is it?

Oh, 'slot', sorry.

Glad it was you, Nick. Glad it was you.

Thanks for the advice, have loaded all the chipset drivers and all the on board PCI hardware works fine, but the physical PCI slots just don't function no matter what I do.

Having taken the motherboard out, it appears to be badly buckled (no idea how that managed to happen). My guess is that although the chipset and PCI bus is working, the connection to the slots is broken somewhere. Being that I also have a dead PS/2 keyboard port, this too would suggest a physical fault with the board.

Picked up a new board this morning, transferred all the hardware over to it, and it all works fine.