My main machine quit on me yesterday....

[exploder]

My quad core HP system quit working yesterday.... I think the NVidea on-board graphics failed because the computer will come on briefly then the screen shuts off or is black with artifacts at the top. Luckily, I have a duel core machine I built a couple of years ago to fall back to. I am hoping I can get a replacement main board for the HP because everything else is still in good shape. I tested the monitor and it is fine on the backup computer.

I hope HP still has replacement parts for a 3 year old machine. Anyone ever try and purchase replacement parts from HP?

[GeneC]

exploder

If you cant find a replacement MB, how about just adding a new aux video card?
I got a new Nvidia GeoForce 210 (1 gb) a while back for $40....
(Its in my old Dell P4, and works very nicely).
https://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+ ... e&ie=UTF-8

[exploder]

Thanks GeneC, I think I might just give that a try.

[exploder]

I have been using the machine I built for a good week or so and it runs well enough that I am not going to worry about the HP for now. Mint 14 x64 Cinnamon runs nice and fast on this hardware. I used an Antec gaming case with lots of fans, a Thermaltake 650 watt power supply, a Biostar AM2+ mainboard with thermal protection, 4 GB of Corseair RAM with a lifetime warranty, and the duel core processor is running at 2.9 GHz. I used a huge heatsink with heat pipes and arctic silver. The only reason this machine just sat around is because sometimes it would not boot right, it would stop on verifying DMI pool data. I fixed the problem by installing a new combo drive. The original drive appeared to work fine but it came out of a lightning struck computer that I salvaged parts from. Something in the firmware must have been messed up I guess.

I have the worst luck with computers.... Maybe my luck is changing though. I took the 2 TB hard drive out of the HP and installed it in the home built system, it's a Western digital Green drive and I put it right in front of one of the front case fans and it is staying nice and cool. The only component that really sucks is the GT 220 graphics card, it works alright but it's nothing special. I have a high end ATI graphics card that was given to me but it has always been a pain because the drivers are never worth a darn.

I felt really bad when the HP quit, I really liked how well it ran Linux. I guess I will just get another board and chip for the home built machine when it no longer does the job.

On a good note, I finally got Mint 14 running nice on my HP laptop! The laptop has a quad core processor and 8 GB of RAM but I was constantly having issues with the hybrid graphics with Mint. Just for the heck of it I installed Mint 14 x64 Cinnamon again and installed all the updates. After all of the updates were installed the graphics are working right with the open source drivers! At first the graphics were horrible, lots of artifacts and black around anything I would open. The problem with 6 images of the greeter and booting to a black screen appear to be gone too. I have rebooted the laptop like a million times with no problems anymore.

I was real happy to get both these machines running Mint 14 and best of all, I do not have to spend any money to fix anything. I will just recycle the remaining good parts from the HP desktop when I find a use for them.

[xenopeek]

Congratulations on fixing the machines! Sounds like you have two nice machines going now. Being able to handle computers parts really pays off

[exploder]

Best of all I can finally run Mint 14.1 x64 Cinnamon on my laptop! I really wanted to run Cinnamon on the laptop and before all of the updates the only thing that would run decent was Ubuntu 12.04. Ubuntu was better than nothing but I really like Cinnamon and now it is running great on the laptop. I still can not believe the open source drivers are working so good now! This is the best I have had this laptop running since I got it! I sure am happy with the laptop now.

[SurfaceUnits]

Depending on the model of the HP, a system board replacement can be very expensive - Proprietary boards made by ASUS Pegatron, ECS etc. Give me the model number of thePC and I'll give you some alternatives.

Also, you can get video cards from newegg.com for 15-20 dollars after the usual 10-20 dollar rebate. MSI, Gigabyte and a few others are the best for rebates.

[Orbmiser]

Lucky here in Portland,Or. and nationally famous for unique program of giving back to the community.
http://www.freegeek.org/

Volunteer
You can get a free computer using Ubuntu & Gnome, classes and a year of free tech support by volunteering in either our Adoption or Build programs.

Hardware Grants
Through our Hardware Grants Program, we grant computers and other hardware to non-profits and community organizations.
Thrift Store

If none of the above options work for you, our Thrift Store offers warrantied and supported systems, as well as parts, accessories and surprises, all for head-spankingly low prices.
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