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Computers and Software => Computers and Software - General => Topic started by: Dottonedan on March 01, 2012, 09:26:37 PM
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Ok. So my PC is now dead. I had my wife's IT person (from her work) go over it with my wife on the phone and then had my guy (Pierre) go over it with me on the phone and no go. This is about the 3rd time it's just crashed and now it won't re- start at all. Both IT guys say take it to BEST BUY or some place to give it a once over. So, what do I do now? Well, I look over at my dusty Mac and say. hmmmm, I wonder if it runs? It was hit by the same power outage in fact, many times over the years. BING! It's on. Up and running again. It's a little slow but a good product.
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The last time I had a breakdown was the power supply after a power outage, and then it came back on (with no surge protector).
But it was pretty easy to diagnose as there was no power!
What are your symptoms? (not that I can offer much if Pierre can't help) but someone else may out there may get a clue.
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Lights and sound come on the PC. No lights on the key board or wacom. No connection on he monitor. Light is on on the monitor but says (no signal). Basically, the PC does not power up all the way. My external hard drive does have a light one. All lights coming from the pC are on. PC makes a running sound, but no connection.
Checked all connections, restarted in multiple ways. Un plugged the power cord while on (I guess that can re-set things).
Still nothing.
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do you keep your computers on a UPS, you should. Hard drives are very prone to damage to electrical surges. A good UPS will clear that up.
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do you keep your computers on a UPS, you should. Hard drives are very prone to damage to electrical surges. A good UPS will clear that up.
or a laptop
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laptops suck. they just don't have the usable life of a desktop.
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Don't know what a UPS is, but I do have a good surge protector. Well, I thought I did.
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Sounds like the Power Supply. There are two different voltages that come from a PC Power Supply. If you take just the square box (The CPU) to any tech they could tell you in seconds.
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A ups is an acronym for an unintruptable power supply. Usually the power strip ones suck. You want to buy one from trip lite or apc.
Check provantage.com
Also laptops are great. I do everything on mine and I'm not tied to a desk.
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Both IT guys say take it to BEST BUY
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BZNYYBGOjg0/TcFxzOP7RLI/AAAAAAAAAII/7p3vLYoaI2A/s320/Are-you-freaking-kidding-me.jpg)
My suggestion is do not EVER listen to another piece of advise from these IT guys, and for the love of all that is good and just in this world, DO NOT TAKE IT TO BEST BUY. They are barely more qualified to fix it than the greasy kid at the local McDonalds. You will end up paying out the ass for a repair or buying a new machine, there is no in-between with them.
Take it to a local PC repair place. An independent shop. Look on Yelp or some such site for reviews of the service.
It sounds like you have a motherboard or power supply issue. Posibly something as simple as the motherboard battery, or who knows. I bet it's a much more simple fix than Best Buy would make it out to be.
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do you keep your computers on a UPS, you should. Hard drives are very prone to damage to electrical surges. A good UPS will clear that up.
A UPS is great if you are working on a file and want to save your work before the computer shuts off, but they are not essential for surge protection. (although most UPS's are good for that too)
UPS's can get expensive, the cheap ones are finicky and the batteries in them have a relatively short lifespan.
Just buy a good power strip that has built in surge protection, Costco usually has them for about $20-$30 or so. Look for the one with the highest joule rating you can find without spending a ton of cash.
The one under my desk is the crazy multi-media kind, it was widened spots for wall wart transformers and you can run TV cables through it to protect a TV from spikes as well.
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+1000 on stay away from best buy. It's all a gimmick to get you to buy a new computer, nothing ever gets fixed.
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Major Bummer. If you need help with anything other than IT give me a shout Dan.
If you can get into the system, try removing Illy. Might be the problem :P JK but in all seriousness, if you need any help Dan, let me know.
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I would guess power supply as well.
Of course, that's me sitting here not able to look at the machine.
Fixed one computer where the power supply had died ( a cheap pos ).
Unfortunately, when it died it took out the motherboard as well.
Salvaged cpu, ram, etc, and just switched the board out.
Pull the power supply out ( if you feel up to it ) and get it tested first.
Make sure to discharge yourself of static before you go poking around inside.
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A good UPS will last years, I have had much better luck with those than a regular surge protector or suppressor. In the 8 years I have been running a UPS, I have not had 1 hard drive fail. Before that about 1 a year would go down.
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Thanks all for the input. What the IT guys were saying, is that since they cant look at it themselves, to take it to a repair shop. Best Buy was named but loosely just as a for example.
I took it to a local guy here in town. My guess is the PC in it is bad. Ha!
Or it could be that old Corel program with some kind of virus. ;) they have a poor immune system. ;)
I appreciate the assistance. Sine I don't know my power supply from my food supply, I will let the techs tell me it's fried and will cost $1 million for retrieval.
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The most for retrieval I have seen is less than $3k. Most of the time drives still spin and you can pull the data off. One time mine didn't and it had to be dismantled and put into another drive. I did get a 150GB external hard drive out of the deal though.
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It really does sound like a bad PSU any PC repair guy worth their salt will have a meter to test the out puts and confirm, would literally take them seconds.
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A good UPS will last years, I have had much better luck with those than a regular surge protector or suppressor. In the 8 years I have been running a UPS, I have not had 1 hard drive fail. Before that about 1 a year would go down.
x2! When I was a noob with my Macs, I never gave a second thought about power supplies and surge protectors and happily got by with the low buck strips. After I had two mother boards fry up like bacon after power surges, my Mac IT guru insisted I run a UPS. I run the largest capacity UPS's I can find behind all my towers, printers and everything digital in my studio and never looked back.
All this digital hardware and the work that I create with it is too important to mess around with having my investments go up in smoke from something as simple as a thunderstorm or numbskull work crews digging nearby.
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PSU seems like at least 70% of the non-data failures I've seen... It's worth having a spare on hand, IMHO. Bad power is especially hard on them as well. Although I'd say get a quality UPS if you get one, a junky one will have crappy batteries you have to replace far too often.
LOL @ Evo --he's right on--take that thing out for rifle practice before you take it to Best Buy--They aren't even trustworthy for discount peripherals, from what I've experienced.
The last component I got there "on special" was a video card which had an incorrect bios chip for the processor. The guy instantly copped an attitude when I said it, snarling "They don't sell processors like that this cheap", so I asked him to google it and confirm his suspicions. No other customers at the counter. TEN MINUTES LATER he came back to admit that I was right, and give me a refund. Talk about slow on a number of levels.
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Basically, the PC does not power up all the way.
Fans can spins, lights glow, and a power system can still be 100% defective. A power controller decides when the CPU executes. That controller is one of many power system components. Three choices. See the problem and then fix it. Just keep replacing good parts until something works. Or take it to a shop.
The first option requires a multimeter as sold even in Wal-Mart for $17 or Harbor Freight for $5. Without numbers from that meter, then nobody can identify the defect.
Normal is for a power system to be defective even when purchased. Then cause failures months or a year later. The defect could have been seen long ago. But that tool is required.
Should you decide to get the meter, then a one minute of labor can provide numbers that others can decipher. Otherwise just do what most techs do. Keeping replacing good parts until it works.
UPS would have done nothing for you. In fact, if 'dirty' power is harmful to a computer, then 'dirtiest' power output by a UPS would be more harmful. Why is a UPS not harmful? Because all power supplies are required to be so robust as to make dirty power - especially 'dirtiest' from a UPS - irrelevant.
As Inkman996 so accurately noted, "any PC repair guy worth their salt will have a meter to test the outputs and confirm". Most have no idea how to use one. Let alone know how to decipher its numbers. So many techs will just replace a power supply and other parts until something works.
Same also explains why so many recommend a UPS that does nothing to clean power or protect a computer. Its specs do not even claim to do that. Only advertising makes those 'subjective' claims. A UPS is made so cheaply as to have a battery life expectancy of three years. It is only temporary and dirty power for blackouts. So that unsaved data can be saved.
A minimally sufficient supply should cost at least $60. That does not say a $60 supply is sufficient. Only that supplies selling for $25 or $40 are marketed to many who could not use a meter and believe advertising (ie a UPS protects a computer).
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Well, I swap parts because I have test PSU's just for that laying around the shop. It's quicker and easier to just swap out to multi-pins then it is to break out the fluke (that thing is always hiding somewhere). I just did this today on a junk HP that has a "special" sized PSU... I put a regular PSU on top of it and poof it fired up. Now I got to order another POS PSU for this crap and charge this guy way too much for it. :(
UPS's can help. I only buy ones that regulate voltage. They will take 90-140v and "smooth" it out to 120v. I deal with a lot of offshore platforms, no granted they run on really dirty generator power, but I have less come back for power issues when they use UPS then those that don't.
I had a customer bring in his computer to me and he got it back from Best Buy and they completely wiped his hard drive. Not reinstalled his OS, just wiped out his hard drive. No partition nothing. They gave it back to him like that! I was like WTF?! I immediately stopped and said "you didn't pay for that did you?" He said no. I was about to send him right back to get his money back if he had before I did anything to it. I always feel so bad for the people that bring in their computers to me and they have multiple little pink stickers on the backs of them.
Dan, the main problem with this situation is these manufacturers have to cut corners to make and sell computers for less than I can build them for. I know they get discounts because of the volume and buying directly. I know they make money on extended warranties... but they also make their money by cutting corners. They put in crappy power supplies that can't do a decent job of filtering out or handling bad power and they burn up all too easily. Also they put in cheap RAM and they get mother board manufactures to build them their own motherboards which have corners cut in who knows where but there must be a reason to have them build one vs buying one they are already building over and over again.
A fellow screen printer/embroiderer has had computers in rotation here. He brings in one and I fix it and it sits here. Then when his other one breaks he comes pick up the first one and drops of the other one.... rinse and repeat. I finally convinced him to let me build him a computer and he basically bought the PC that I was building my wife while he was there... so the wife wasn't pleased about that and I had to order all new parts for hers. I haven't had another one of his computers in here since and he did 8 Carhartt jacket backs for me the other day for free. :)
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I always build our PC's at work and home, one area I never skimp on is a quality PSU.
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a good psu lasts longer and puts off less heat....that is crucial in the summer time and for a longer life for the rest of the system.
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Two things that will kill a hard drive.
Heat and bad power.
Your hard drives are kind of important.
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Hard drives aren't that important. Unless you want to use the computer.
I know people knock PC's, but the reason PC's can be so cheap is because they skimp on the hardware. You just don't get the same level of hardware from a $500 pc as you do from a $5,000 MAC. Otherwise people would buy the PC and install OS on it.
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I wonder how many people get ripped off by places like Best buy when they bring in their dead PC and are told simply buy a new one when all it really was is a bad PSU?
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I don't know, but it's sort of like home inspectors that also run repair businesses. That isn't shady at all. My dad ran into that with the last house he sold...the exterminator in charge of the termite letter for the home buyer said there was damage, but my dad's guy found nothing...both times he went out.
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Sign up for email from NewEgg and Tiger Direct....Then watch their emails for "Deals of the Day".....I built my last computer 1 piece at a time for a very good price......
Today NewEgg has this PSU for 60.00 after all coupons and rebates.... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341051 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341051)
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That's a good way for a guy like me to end up with a cabinet full of goodies he didn't need. :)
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something you don't need at a price you can't refuse.
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something you don't need at a price you can't refuse.
This my basis for Garage Sale purchases, and the philosophy I try to instill in first time sellers.