Motherboard replacement - easy or not ?

Andrew Davies Photography

Andrew Davies Photography

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OK so had some RAM issues with my Dell XPS 8100 and turns out i have some bad ram slots so need to replace the motherboard , having looked round i can buy exactly the same board that is in there and hopefully replace it without too much technical knowledge.

Question is will i have any software issues , will i need to reinstall anything windows drivers etc or will it all just work as before ?

cheers for any input !

Andy
 
Andrew Davies Photography said:
OK so had some RAM issues with my Dell XPS 8100 and turns out i have some bad ram slots so need to replace the motherboard , having looked round i can buy exactly the same board that is in there and hopefully replace it without too much technical knowledge.

Question is will i have any software issues , will i need to reinstall anything windows drivers etc or will it all just work as before ?

cheers for any input !

Andy
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Everything should be fine, just check the BIOS settings before replacing it and setting them the same after you have replaced the motherboard.
You might get the odd quirk about a driver when you boot up for the first time but they will be easy to download from the Dell website.
If need be you can allow windows to do a search and see if it can pick up the drivers from the windows directories.
Problems only tend to happend when replacing a motherboard if it uses a different chipset/sound chip/ onboard graphics (if it supports it).
You may need to buy some heatsink paste to apply between the CPU and heatsink but you can quite often refit them if the paste is still intact.
 
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My Windows OS detected a BIOS upgrade and required revalidation of licence (which I didn't expect).
If it's a DELL OEM licence you may run into same issue (depending on how the licence is locked down).
 
I would update the BIOS on the current motherboard before you do anything, that will confirm if the issue is hardware or firmware related. The latest version of the BIOS is A05 (it displays it at the same time as the Dell logo on boot-up. The driver can be downloaded here: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/studio-xps-8100/drivers

Backup ALL data and take notes of software before you rebuild, just in case!

Changing a motherboard is straight forward once you've done it a few time, it's not hard but you'll need some new CPU paste, once you remove the CPU fan clean the paste from that and the CPU and apply a thin layer of new paste.

Also take lots of photos from what is in the motherboard, especially little cables, these are the things like the power button, LEDs and case/CPU fans, all are important and if you forget where they came from or which way they were it it's a pain in the arse finding out.

Once you have installed the new motherboard as soon as you power on go into the BIOS (F2 at the Dell logo), in there reset the BIOS. You may need to go through the BIOS and make sure all the settings are correct, this will be making sure the SATA ports are enabled so your hard drives and DVD drivers work.

One final point is to search YouTube before if you are worried, someone is bound to have a video doing this, maybe not the same PC but a PC or a Dell...
 
thank you , i am feeling fairly confident about doing it - just the worry of software and windows issues after.

Do you think resetting the bios now might solve the problem ? i have tried swapping mem in slots around and can only get two slots to react and they are not the paired ones. the others give beep codes and wont boot.
 
If the PC has been working fine before, its quite rare to come across faulty slots.

9 times of 10 it is the memory that usually goes faulty as there are more sensitive to power jolts.

Try taking out the RAM and blow some compressed air on the slots to clear any dust and try it again before you buy a new motherboard or RAM.
 
Just a cautious note on Dell kit. They had a habit of producing the same motherboard with the same part number but would change the chipset, a right pain. Check the assembly numbers on the board match.
Might be an idea to download all the latest drivers too before changing as you may find the onboard network card may be different!

**Disclaimer, it's been a while since I have had to support Dell kit at work so hopefully they have got their act together by now.
 
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