I've been having problems and I've pinpointed it to the motherboard. Can you safely take out a CPU and put it onto another motherboard without problems? I currently have a thermal pad on it and the heatsink, do I need to clean that off and use thermal paste? I just need to know if it will work and be fine. Thanks.

There should be no problem swapping the HSfan/CPU to another motherboard, as long as the CPU is compatible with the new motherboard. Thermal paste is better than the pads anyway. You need to clean off all the pad residue with solvent and apply a thin even layer of paste. Use something like the edge of a business card to spread the paste after applying a small dab. The very first thing to do when you boot the new board is to check the processor tempurature in the BIOS. Leave the BIOS open for a few minutes to make sure that the temps are going to be OK. One question for you though, how do you know for sure that CPU is OK? If it isn't, you will be spinning your wheels trying to troubleshoot the new system. I would suggest that you test the CPU in another system or maybe take it to a shop and have it tested.

Well, as of right now, I've concluded that the problem is with the motherboard, and I'm having doubts towards CPU. The problem was a start up problem and with the connection from my power supply to my motherboard. I replaced the power supply and still have the problem. The other option was it's an HD problem, but I have three of them and they are all affected. So I'm just leaning towards the motherboard and the main problem. You can read about my other problem here. http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/92218.html And thanks for the help.

Looked at your original thread. The way to eliminate everything but the MB, CPU, memory, power supply, and video card, is to strip the machine down to those five items. It wouldn't hurt to even remove the MB from the case to eliminate the possibility of a short. One stick of ram no other cards, HDs or IDE cables connected, no floppy cables, no power to any drives. The system should boot to a system disk error. If that happens then you can start adding in hardware one item at a time. Start with the HD with the OS on it. If you can boot to and run windows, add hardware, one piece at a time. If the system won't post to system disk error, or no screen is seen, then one or more of five things is at fault. The four you have connected or the power supply. Only way to go further is to substitute known good parts, or test memory, CPU, video card in another system.

Thanks for the help. I did as you said and I started having problems with my connection to the motherboard from the power supply again, but after some more twiddling, it started up again. I tested everything. Well, nothing seems to be really wrong, just when I boot up from the BIOS and into Windows, it's pain-stakingly slow, and I fear that this small problem will lead into something bigger. And when I try to open files on any of my HDs it is slow and my music files skip. But it is the same for all of them. I then tested my HD and RAM on my other computer down the hall. Everything seems to be functioning fine. So all I have to really wonder is if it is the processor or the motherboard. But with the recent problems with booting up or just starting it with the connections, I'm leaning towards the motherboard. Do you have any suggestions?

Motherboard can't be fast or slow. Either it works or it don't. You may have a configuration problem or a conflict with hardware or software. New motherboard may not solve that problem. Try booting to safe mode and check in device manager for multiple entries where you should have one. If you find this to be the case, remove all entries in that catagory and re-boot.

I've checked for multiple entries, but nothing wrong came up. Do you know what might be the problem with me turning the computer on? It's like if I hit the on switch, I can see the cpu fan start to spin, and then it would just stop. I have to fiddle with the cable just to start it up. Again, thanks a bunch for the help. So here are my current problems. 1) Powering up 2) BIOS Checking for IDE Really Slow. 3) Booting up after that. 4) And I've started to notice clicking when I check the drive in My Computer. It kinda sounds like the disc is speeding up, stopping, and speeding up again, but it's happening to all my drives. I'm pretty much clueless now as to what the problem might be. Any help is appreciated.