I’ve just finished a motherboard upgrade on a Compaq SR5702UK. A Client brought his machine into the surgery last week which was looking distinctly sickly on arrival. Although the unit powered on and the cooling fans were working, there were no other signs of life – no reassuring POST beeps, no spinning of the hard drive and just a blank screen. Motherboards can fail with little warning. Although the 5702 is a budget desktop, its quite well put together and has a reasonable performance. This one had been upgraded to Windows 7 and although only fitted with 2gb of RAM, was well worth rescuing from oblivion!
A new Gigabyte motherboard and an additional 2gb of RAM to bring it up to 4gb in total – my recommended working amount of memory for Windows 7 – and the Compaq was back up and running in no time, even though I had to reinstall Windows as part of the rebuild.
Bear in mind if you do want to upgrade your motherboard, there may be licensing implications as far as your existing copy of Windows is concerned. If you have an OEM, rather than a full retail version of Windows, you may find it difficult to reactivate your operating system. OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) versions of Windows are normally sold to system builders and hardware manufacturers in bulk and at a reduced unit price but often have licensing restrictions tying them to a single machine as a consequence. Microsoft can view changing a motherboard as a change of machine. Be warned. Factoring in the cost of a new Windows 7 license as part of a motherboard upgrade can be quite significant!