Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Torak]

My computer froze one night in the middle of a play-through of Morrowind (inspired by the banter of it in the Fallout 3 thread, no less).

No issue, I thought, I will just turn it off then on, and continue from the last autosave. I turn it off, then try to turn it back on. It turns on and doesn't run the fans or anything internal, not even the monitor. I don't think of this as a major problem, so I go behind the computer and unplug everything including the power. I replug them all and try another boot.

This time the computer runs, but wrong, meaning the fans go off and run at 1000% of safe speed, and the computer beeps once every few seconds. I am knowledged in compaq beep codes and decided to look it up, there was nothing on a single beep beep code. I assumed it was something wrong with the processor and was adamant that a new one would fix 'er right up.

Skip three days later, after getting a great bargain on Ebay for the exact same processor as the one I had before, I go through the steps of replacing it. After getting it all nice and snug inside, I try another boot. To my despair, the same thing happens as before.


So here I am, using my 10 year old computer with 100 MB of ram and a prehistoric amount of processing power, and it runs Windows ME, hooray! I have no idea what to do next, I've tried brainstorming to no avail. I may try getting a new computer with the same DDR compatibility so i can just take the RAM and video card out of my old one along with the harddrive.

Or maybe not, if someone can tell me what the hell happened to my computer, I was thinking it was the power supply or something like that.

[Captain Hat]

Yeah, I had something like that happen to my old computer, the one that could actually take a graphics card.

It's probably your power supply, that's what it is with the one I was talking about.

[Footkerchief]

Why would you try to repair a dinosaur like that?  You can probably get a computer twice as good for less than your Ebay rush shipping.

There's a good your graphics card and RAM won't work in any remotely modern machine, but seriously RAM is dirt cheap anyway.  100 MB is like $5 worth.

[Torak]

Why would you try to repair a dinosaur like that?  You can probably get a computer twice as good for less than your Ebay rush shipping.

There's a good your graphics card and RAM won't work in any remotely modern machine, but seriously RAM is dirt cheap anyway.

You misunderstand, I am using an old computer I had stuffed away in some extra space, my old computer was a beast. Atleast slightly beastly considering my lack of money.

[Footkerchief]

Oh, haha, I guess the "I was playing Morrowind" part should have clued me in.

[Reasonableman]

Hhhhhhrm. CMOS issue, maybe? I'd go for the power supply problem, possibly. One of the two. Particularly if you aren't getting any monitor output.

Also maybe memory?

Perhaps no proper boot media is detected?

[umiman]

I've had this too. Replacing the power supply helped my old PC, but it basically put it on life support. Sometimes, technology just gets too old.

[Cthulhu]

Have you tried logarithms?

[JoshuaFH]

Have you tried logarithms?

This is no time for XKCD jokes. this is serious business.

[DJ]

5$ say it's the motherboard.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Offtopic: Do any of you guys think that we are like the Assyrians? Instead of going to doctor, sit in the front of the door, and waiting for advices from random bywalkers that kind enough to give advice.

That's maybe because of BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

[lumin]

I'd say it's a problem with the power supply.  If you notice that the fan and video card (monitor) are not working when you try to boot, it would be too coincidental for both of them to go bad at the same time.

Fortunately power supplies are very cheap and pretty simple to replace.

[Torak]

I'd say it's a problem with the power supply.  If you notice that the fan and video card (monitor) are not working when you try to boot, it would be too coincidental for both of them to go bad at the same time.

The fans didn't work until I unplugged the power supply long enough for it to power off completely, and after that the fans would run way above normal speed and the monitor would still not turn on.

[DJ]

Well, there's a way to know for sure if it's PSU. Take the PSU out of this old computer you're using and put it in your new one. I don't think PSUs have changed much since the 90's, but check their stats just to be on the safe side.

[Sean Mirrsen]

My not-so-new computer recently died in a similar way. The fans were running, however. It turned out that the power supply went haywire and fried the GPU, and the system was somehow refusing to boot without one. Had to replace both to get it working.