Dell Dimension 2400 No Post (Bad Mobo)

[mkw87]

I am trying to help out a friend of my mothers by fixing their 2 year old dell that randomly stopped working. When powering the PC on, it does not post. The power light on the mobo is on, the lights on the front turn on, the CPU fan turns on, but I cannot tell if the HD spins up. I narrowed it down to the motherboard or CPU because it should post w/o a hard drive attached. I tried a separate, known working, power supply and ram module.

 

So I ordered a new Mobo from Ebay that was supposedly brand new, I even contacted the seller to make sure it was working, he said it was before shipping, but I get the same results with it as I did before I put the new one in. So now I figure the chip is bad (maybe the mobo too, I'm not sure), and I'm not sure of a way to verify it is the chip for sure except to get a replacement and try it, which they do not want to do b/c I can't find one for a decent price and you can buy a new dell for ~350 anyways.

 

But, if the chip is good, I could sell it someone, make a few bucks for them, and help someone else out (same if the mobo is good), does anyone know of a way to test the cpu? Its an Intel P4 centrino, socket 478.

 

Thanks.