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by Josh Baltzell.
Original Post: Problems with my Motherboard
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I recently bought a Soltek 75MRL motherboard from Newegg. I have loved this computer since the day I got it. It is fast, stable, and every single thing is built in (including 5.1 audio, 10/100 Network, and Geforce 4 MX video). I play some pretty demanding games like Vice City and Star Wars Galaxies on it and it runs them all well.
On Wednesday I came home from work and it wouldn't get on the network. I assumed it was the hub I was plugged in to (My house is packed with computers and electronics) because it was flashing strangely. It flashed the connected light on and off and the collision light would come on with it. Then I tried an old 10Base hub and it didn't work either. Then I was wondering if the network port on the board was shot. I tried pinging the loopback (127.0.0.1) and it wouldn't ping, so I rebooted. I could ping the loopback and localhost, but nothing else. Plus when I had the network wire plugged in it would freeze up just for a moment at the same times as all the network collisions were happening. So I assumed it was the long Ethernet wire that ran from one end of the house to the other, but we tested a laptop and it worked fine.
So I tore the computer open and found it was really dirty in the middle of the board. The reason was that there is a side firing fan that blows in and I am a smoker. So that fan was just throwing dirt and smoke at the board. I flipped the fan and cleaned the wires and the board up a little while I put the network card in.
After I booted back up the computer got on the network with the new card and I downloaded the newest BIOS (Which was something I was planning on doing before since the POST screen says “Not for Production use”.) After I installed the BIOS update it worked just fine. Granted I didn't test right after cleaning up the computer, but there was no mention of fixing a random network problem in the BIOS description.
So I guess the moral is that you need to keep your computer as clean as possible. Sometimes all a malfunctioning computer needs is a little cleanup.
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