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pc query

phattanglo

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phattanglo

phattanglo

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Hope the computer boffins can help me with a problem.

For some time my pc has been randomly closing down and rebooting itself and finally it has given up the ghost almost completely.

Now if I switch it on it will get as far as the first system information screen, beeps once and makes a short chattering noise which I assume is the hard drive trying to do something and then the screen goes blank.

Could anyone point me in the right direction of things to try to fix it.

Also I have a netbook which seems to run Stellarium nicely except it will not run at the system date and time despite setting it to do so. Any pointers would be appreciated.

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astroimpulse

astroimpulse

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Agreed. If you hear the beep; 99% of the time it means the motherboard is fine. The beep indicates all bios and checks are fine.

You can buy HDDs very cheaply these days and you can install the OS onto the new drive and you might be able to retrieve data from the old drive if it's just damaged in the old OS sectors.

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brantuk

brantuk

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Start up in safe mode - press and hold "F8" during the boot process to get the menu option to do that. Once booted - ignore the screen settings which will make everything appear large - and click "start" and choose "run". Type in "cmd" to get a command window. Then type in "chkdsk.exe" at the prompt.

If you can do this all ok then it will take a couple of hours to put the hard drive in an acceptable state to reboot windows. If you can't then the disk is scuppered. :)

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Trevor-Austin

Trevor-Austin

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With no correctly fitted heat sink and fan it could melt in a few seconds.

It sounds like it's getting worse so either the case fan is blocked with dust or CPU fan the same, the latter on a laptop is not an easy fix, much easier on a desktop/tower.

There are other things it could be, but with your symptoms mostly heat related, and if not them not very repairable.

Only other thing to try of you have additional memory installed is to swap dimms about.

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phattanglo

phattanglo

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I'm pretty much computer illiterate so if getting rid of dust & fluff doesn't do it I'm stuffed.

My only regret would be losing all my family pics, yes I know I should back up important stuff but like I say I'm no techie, I wouldn't know where to start.

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  • 2 weeks later...
phattanglo

phattanglo

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After taking the pc to a repairer who does free assessments it seems the motherboard is shot.

I am a bit surprised as the repairer said MB's are really expensive and that it would be cheaper to buy a new pc.

Is it not possible to just replace the mb or does it need expensive specialist tools ?

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StevieDvd

StevieDvd

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The suggestion to check using a linux CD or USB is a good idea.

But the first thing I would recommend is checking if you can open up the bios screen. When it first boots up the screen will briefly say press F2 or F12 or Del to get into setup, dependng on the bios. This is well before any windows boot screen appears. You may need to restart it a few times to a) See what key it says and :icon_eek: hit the key several times to interrupt the windows startup.

If you can do that and the bios screen comes up then the MB may be OK and we can guide you through changing the PC to boot from a DVD or USB key. You can always grab a Linux bootable DVD from a newsagent, magazine for around a fiver will have one - Linux User etc.

Motherboards can be as little as £50 but you'd need to make sure the one you buy matches your memory, cpu, graphics card etc.

What make of PC, cpu etc do you have and have you got your data backed up?

Chattering does not sound like a MB issue to me, more like a disk not working.

Steve

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nightfisher

nightfisher

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my laptop is at the menders as we speak the southbridge chip needs reballing back to the motherboard, right common fault in T40`s, and wont be getting it back for another 2 weeks so no imaging for me for a while

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StevieDvd

StevieDvd

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All I know is it is a Datamax pc running Windows XP professional.

I really am a luddite with computers and I don't know how to obtain the data regarding components.

No unfortunately I have nothing backed up :icon_eek:

When it first starts (screen mostly black and a few lines of text at top) does it say something like AMI Bios or Phoenix Bios?

If you let me know what it says I'll tell you the key to hit to access the bios. If we can get to the bios settings we can check temperature, boot settings and disks.

A lot of dust & fluff around the power supply fan can halt a pc, you need to blow it all out but no with a vacuum cleaner as that puts out static which can kill your pc!

Steve

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phattanglo

phattanglo

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Stevie I couldn't get any info re Bios but pressing f8 got me into a menu with stuff like safe start, start from last good version, debug etc.

I'm afraid I don't know if that's the screen you meant but whichever option I select the screen just goes blank.

The only other info I have is the processor is an Intel Pentium 4.

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