Just a quick message to bemoan my poor luck with technology of late. About a month ago my desktop PC blew up. No smoke or bangs or anything dramatic like that - just the briefest whimper of a fan spluttering into life for a fraction of a second as I turned the machine on, then nothing. At all. Aha, I thought, this is most probably a simple case of my power supply deciding it's had enough.
Unfortunately, work and children prevented me from doing anything immediately, but the other day I finally managed to order a replacement PSU which arrived yesterday.
"Hooray", thought I, "an evening's work of carefully unplugging and replugging components and all will be as good as new" (actually better, as I had taken the opportunity to upgrade the PSU wattage!).
Taking my time, so as not to make any mistakes, I spent an hour ensuring that all of the cables led exactly where they previously did and then held my breath as after putting it all back together I pressed the power button. The renewed whirr of the fans and the glow of the LEDs truly were things of beauty to me and I sat on the floor basking in the joy of having my PC back alive (and also rather pleased that my initial diagnosis had proved correct).
Now, this is the important bit. I'm not a computer engineer (in fact the plugging in of the components did stretch me a little but i got there in the end) but I'm certain that when you turn on a computer something, enything, should appear on the monitor, other than the message I got which said "no signal". I do remember that prior to the breakdown I could see things in the monitor (pretty colours, moving pictures, MS Windows logos - that sorth of thing). This is no longer the case, and I honestly don't know what to do. So I'm fed up and an writing this message to let off some steam.
The situation is not helped by the incidental fact that last week our oly other computer (my wife's laptop) also decided to die in a big way. The good news is that we have a new laptop on order, but I can't really afford to replace my desktop as well, and replacing the components leads to escalating costs (e.g. if I have to replace the motherboard, I'll also have to replace my video board as it's an old AGP model and I may also have to replace the RAM).
Ah well. If anyone has had any similar issue with their computer and it had a simple, obvious and above all cheap solution, I'd love to hear from you.
Inscrutable
I know the feeling, been there many times. Question, does your motherboard have onboard video and did you try attaching your monitor to that? Or do you only have a APG video card? Sounds like when your Power Supply went by-by it may have taken your video card with it. Video cards aren't all that expensive and you don't need a cutting edge one to run TG because TG uses mostly CPU. Do you know anyone who might have a video card laying around that would let you use it for testing purposes before you go out and buy a new card? It might be worth a shot?
My new 1tb HDD came DOA so I share your pain.
@Will - WHA'? No way. That's degenerative salesmanship. What store was it or do you mind saying? I once got a power supply from EggHead that was belly up.
Newegg but I've never had problems with them before so I think is has to do with Hitachi QA
Hehe, Hitachi took over the old IBM "Deathstar" line. I steer clear of Hitachi now. Samsung, Seagate or Western Digital for me generally. Sometimes Maxtor...
- Oshyan
yea whatever it'll be replaced..thats my first and last hitachi.
EDIT:honestly why can't I seem to spell?
Right. The power supply I bought had some technical problems, but the next one was great and NewEgg gave me a complete refund with free shipping on the replacement.
You're probably right about Hitachi.
Quote from: Will on February 15, 2008, 05:18:44 PM
Newegg but I've never had problems with them before so I think is has to do with Hitachi QA
Hi guys, an update. Having tried an alternative video board I still didn't get anything appearing on screen. I have also noticed that the hard drives and the dvd/cd drives don't seem to be operating, though they're definitely receiving power as they're on the same power loop as the fans that are working.
Also, I nearly burnt my hand on the heat-sink of the motherboard chipset, so the motherboard is definitely receiving power - the fact that it doesn't seem to be doing anything worthwhile with the power is what's now concerning me. As a result I'm now looking at having to replace the motherboard.
Obviously, I'd like to keep costs to a minimum so would like to avoid having to replace all of the pc components at once. I have therefore one question that I was hoping one of you more knowledgable people here can answer for me.
Question: My current (very old) hard drives are IDE, rather than SATA. Some of the motherboards I'm looking at have ATA-133 ports - is this the same as IDE?
I will be looking to replace the hard drives ofver the course of the next few months but can't afford to do it at the same time as the motherboard unless I absolutely have to.
Thanks in advance for your answers!
Inscrutable
Some of the new motherboards do have some way to use the older drives, but in some cases you need to match stuff up. Shop at Newegg.com to hear what others are doing, while you shop. Most of the customers are ready to say what their experience is and might even have some insight specific to your needs.
I'm pretty sure that the ATA-133 ports should be backwards compatible. Damn sure I had to use an old HDD on a 133 port, worked fine (though don't take my word on it) If the no. of pins is the same you should be on to a winner.
ATA-133 is a variety of IDE and should work fine (albeit at reduced speed) with your older drives.
- Oshyan