Motherboard or CPU bad? How to determine?

I have run into a problem with my Gateway M675 laptop.
It had been increasingly getting hotter and hotter every time I used it.
It never shut down but would lock up on rare occasion.
Last time I used it, it reached it's hottest "feel" ever expierenced...to the point that a noticable red mark showed under my shirt.
Anyway...
It now will only power up, but the hard drive will not kick in, monitor will not display, logo screen nor POST screen appears. CPU fans kick in for a second then cut off until CPU area gets hot, then they begin to spin again. Being left on, the CPU area just begins to get hotter and hotter.

I pulled out the Pentium 4 Socket 478 3.2ghz cpu and stuck in a 1.8 Celeron.
The area did not get hot at all with this chip, but nothing else worked as explained above.

Where do I start to determine if the 3.2ghz chip is burned up or if it's a bigger problem and the motherboard is the problem? (I'm hoping the laptop just do anything because the 1.8ghz celeron was incompatible and I'm hoping it didn't do anything with the 3.2 in because it was bad.)
I'm looking for an idea where to start...start small with a new cpu and see if all's well?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Well for the sake of argument, if it was the motherboard, wouldn't the 1.8 I put in heat up as well or do you think that the board just isn't compatible with the older processor and doesn't see it to heat up?

 

Because one will not work without the other, the only way I know to isolate the problem is to change motherboard/CPU. The problems could very well be coming from the motherboard side.

The Celeron has not fixed the problem and as mentioned, it would need to be compatible. Laptops use "mobile" type CPUs. The BIOS needs to be able recognise and use the correct settings for the CPU. There should be a list of compatible CPUs at the Gateway website.

Some suppliers may let you return a CPU if it is not "correct" (but they will inspect and check it thoroughly). What if the motherboard turns out to be the problem?

Be careful what you do with the P4 processor. I have seen an instance of the CPU causing damage to mobos it was tested on. I would suggest you test the mobo by using other CPUs, don't try testing the old CPU on other motherboards.

Matt

 

Joe:

I'd say you have a real problem on your hands. I think that you will find a replacement motherboard from Gateway is going to be cost prohibitive and one can't be 100% sure this is the source of your problem.

I would agree that its easier to "fry" a mainboard than a processor but I've seen bad boards take out CPU's and I've seen bad CPU's take out mainboards. This underscores Matt's comments about motherboard/CPU as both may have to be replaced and once you've gone that far, a new laptop may have been a better decision. Your problem could have been something as simple as a power regulator or converter (no, I'm not talking about an AC adapter but an internal component instead).

I would be more inclined to advise you to send this out to a laptop repair specialist but that would have been before you tried experimenting with the Celeron processor. Any time a processor is changed, CMOS should be cleared before the change and the first time its powered up one should head right into the BIOS to detect the new CPU. Thats all history now ......... you are stuck with what you've got and its doubtful that you have the facilities or equipment necessary to do anything other than start swapping parts - that could be a very expensive excercise with no guarantee you'll ever get that puppy running.

You could look for an identical laptop on ebay with perhaps a bad LCD or some other issue but this too might turn into throwing good money after bad. Perhaps a letter to Santa is your best bet at this point in time.