No luck for the fourth time...

The Dell Technician came over for the fourth time to replace my motherboard.

I was hoping that my fourth motherboard will be problem free, but things just got worse.

30 minutes after the replacement, random patterns appeared on my LCD; about 3 seconds after that, I got the famous "NMI parity check" blue screen...

I feel really bad since I have two gigs of RAM coming tomorrow morning and I really do not want to insert my new RAM before I figure out what's going on with the blue screen problem (otherwise I wouldn't know whether the new RAM causes that kind of blue screen too).

One thing I noticed is that all four replacement boards came with the word "refurbished" on them and all four boards had some problem... I'd suspect that DELL is just shuffling the boards around, so that people who wouldn't mind the high pitch noise will end up with whiny boards and people who wouldn't mind rebooting more often will end up with the "blue screen boards" . This is just my guess ...

 

Sorry to hear that. I hope you get it sorted it out.

 

I highly doubt it, maybe its something else affecting the motherboard because 4 boards in a row is a record in my books.

I've heard about these refurbished boards but to the extend that they shuffle them over and oevr again... i dont know.

 

according to dell the motherboards and all parts arrive at dell in bulk so they have to call all of them refurbished even when they are not

 

4 motherboards, went through 3 on my toshiba, before i througth it out @ 6 months old.

 

that's how it was explained to me as well.

 

I would just ditch Dell - and invoke any Lemon Law policies your state has.

 

I agree to a point, and that would be the quickest and most effective solution, but I'm the type that has to know why, as stated in my reply to another thread on this subject, I would try to get a total replacement, if the same problems keep popping up then, you'll know its most likely something on your end, be it some odd bit of software or a device of some sort, then you can start systematically ruling things out one at a time.

 

Try reinstalling the OS. With every new motherboard a reinstall is a must.

 

I agree it might not be the mother board. It could be the HD or the Ram you are using

 

The NMI error could be caused by just about anything. Even the software can cause it. I just reinstalled XP and while a replacement system is in the works I have found this new install has none, that right none, of the issues that affected the previous install. The screen doesn't blank out during logon (affected cold start only) and the icons don't mysteriously relocate themselves. Well that last one took a registry fix but still... Anyways I will see if the NMI error rears its ugly head again but if it doesn't then I will swap the drives when I get the replacement unit. I still need that ac plug thing fixed anyways and I've determined it to be the motherboard at fault for me so the replacement unit is needed anyways.