Kitz Forum

Chat => Tech Chat => Topic started by: kitz on July 21, 2007, 09:19:10 AM

Title: arghhh
Post by: kitz on July 21, 2007, 09:19:10 AM
Warning that I may not be around too much this weekend.

This morning my PC is poorly.  :'( 
Normally I leave the PC on 24/7 and its never switched off - but for some obscure reason I decided to switch it off last night... and it seems to be protesting this morning.

I have a lappy but all my stuff these days is on the main PC and even when I do use the lappy I tend to constantly access the P4 for stuff.  Ive had a look this am but havent really located what the problem is. 
My first concern today is making sure all the data and backup stuff (on a separate drive) is moved somewhere where I can still access it.
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: fudgem on July 21, 2007, 10:35:52 AM
Sorry to hear of your problems kitz, that's all the thanks you get for going green and trying to save a bit of energy :no:
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: Astral on July 21, 2007, 10:40:03 AM
My PC was on half the night to compensate though, Fudgem. I believe it's called carbon trading, or some such nonsense.

By coincidence, mine had a funny turn and wouldn't shut down properly. Must be global warming, or summat.
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: roseway on July 21, 2007, 10:49:23 AM
Sorry to hear about the poorly PC, Kitz. I trust you've got good backups. :)
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: Pwiggler on July 21, 2007, 12:43:51 PM
ive had pretty much the same .... came home yesterday and my MCE says no OS found.

it couldnt find the hdd in bios or raid config.

did atx reset and it found the drive but bsod on boot, safe mode and lkgc  >:(

thing is i took my backup drive out on wed to install on my other machine so potentially lost 190gb of data !!!

so i stuck an old drive in which is preinstalled with mce so i cound watch some stuff last night.

booted from xp disk this morning and ran chkdsk from recovery console which seems to have fixed it.

backing up everything as we speak (well ... type!)

foooof !

Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: fudgem on July 21, 2007, 12:57:26 PM
wow - did everybody else understand all that from Pwiggler?  am I in the wrong forums?

When anything goes wrong with mine I just shout HELP :P
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: tickmike on July 21, 2007, 04:38:54 PM
wow - did everybody else understand all that from Pwiggler?  am I in the wrong forums?

Yes I can understand it.. :)

No you are not in the wrong forum.
If you need help shout.
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: scottiesmum on July 21, 2007, 04:53:36 PM
Anne .....  you and I could just go and have a coffee   ::) ;D
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: fudgem on July 21, 2007, 06:43:09 PM
Anne .....  you and I could just go and have a coffee   ::) ;D

sounds good to me Kate ;D
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: kitz on July 22, 2007, 10:31:12 PM
okay Im back :)


The problem on mine was the PSU - or more specifically the fan in the PSU. The PC was working at some points yesterday but sounded like it was a jet engine about to take off and screached like crazy.  The noise made the router lights flash rather erractically it was that bad.

Then to top it off the fan on the graphics card on the brats PCs also bust... so the 2 PCs were suddenly in competition to see which could make the most noise. Really dunno what it is with fans this week, but when I opened up kims the CPU fan also wasnt too clever and had cracked so that one needed fixing too.

Unfortunately this month has been very expensive with several unexpected expensive bills and it wasnt looking too good as my Visa card had already taken a hammering.

Anyhow Chris came round this afty with his soldering iron and weve had some "fun" with make-shift stuff rather than having to shell out for new kit.  A mix of solder, superglue, cable ties and some spare fans have got both PCs up and running again.


Thanks ever so much to chris for soldering a new fan on my PSU so thats all sorted. Theres no way I would (could) have attempted to do that myself.

... but I have to show the amusing pic of the "contraption" to get the kims PC working again. The 4" fan replaced the tiny 2" one that was already on there.

Much cheaper than a new graphics card :D


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Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: kitz on July 22, 2007, 10:34:28 PM
I trust you've got good backups. :)

I use robocopy for whole drive copying and also a nice easy lil application which backs up settings configs and also the website stuff. - Replicator (http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp) (only works on windows). 

However its all on the same PC (all be it another disk drive). I also have a pile of stuff on the Link Station NAS but thats just music and photo type stuff off there.

Its only when the PC breaks that your realise how important backups are.
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: kitz on July 22, 2007, 10:38:24 PM
Glad youre sorted too pwiggler. :)
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: tickmike on July 23, 2007, 12:39:03 AM
The fan on one of my computers graphics cards was getting very noisy, so I oiled it and it would be ok for a few months then it would start making noise's again so I uncoupled it,  with no adverse affects at all.  ;)
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: kitz on July 23, 2007, 01:09:17 AM
heh - I wouldn't dare try that.  In the past Ive had a graphics card that consistantly overheated. 

At first I wasnt sure what was crashing the whole system and it wasnt until it started to rattle when the bearing wore loose that I could track down what it was.
The graphics card was replaced under warranty but the amount of crashes actually damaged my HDD.  The graphics card was replaced under warranty and all was well again for a few months..  until it the familiar rattle once again started along with overheating and crashes

The solution was fitting a zalman cooler :-

Before and after

Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: roseway on July 23, 2007, 07:15:48 AM
Glad to see you back Kitz. I liked the picture of Kim's graphics card - it might look a bit OTT but actually a large slow fan is a much better technical solution than a small fast one in all sorts of ways. Fans generally are a PITA, noisy and unreliable, and the world would be better off without them IMO.
Title: Re: arghhh
Post by: mr_chris on July 23, 2007, 12:21:26 PM
Was quite a DIY afternoon wasn't it :)

Could probably have got away with leaving the fan off that graphics card of Kims, if the heatsink had been ... well any kind of heatsink!!

Perhaps installing a case fan instead to blow over the graphics card and take some of the heat away that way would have been more conventional, but it wouldn't have looked quite as, er.. Frank Spencer ;)