Oh bother! Dead PC
- Thread starter plastic penguin
- Start date
Won't let me in...
What a pain.
Died last Tuesday, and the shop indicated it could cost over £100. Maybe worth replacing the old laptop.
Using a friend's laptop so I'll pick-up any messages over the coming days - my business is suffering.
Hey-ho.
What a pain.
Died last Tuesday, and the shop indicated it could cost over £100. Maybe worth replacing the old laptop.
Using a friend's laptop so I'll pick-up any messages over the coming days - my business is suffering.
Hey-ho.
How is it "dead"?
You can get a hard-drive caddy to connect the hard-drive via USB to another laptop and backup all your data.
You can get a hard-drive caddy to connect the hard-drive via USB to another laptop and backup all your data.
If they're estimating over £100, they must be cowboys or it's a fried motherboard-type issue. In which case, "Oh bother!" is quite an apt exclamation.
Got it back this afternoon. It cost a grand total of £114 incl. VAT - they found 4 viruses.
Will have to spend tomorrow installing all my work files.
Will have to spend tomorrow installing all my work files.
Alantiggger
Well-known member
Take a look see here if anything happens again... and keep anti-virus up to date too.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbysymptom/tp/computer-wont-turn-on.htm
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbysymptom/tp/computer-wont-turn-on.htm
If it's any comfort, my PC died last week. Again.
Just after New Year we had a cold front come through with a lot of thunderstorms, which in Houston usually means huge power surges as the mains cables are mostly still on poles down the side of the roads with "pot" transformers (up the poles) stepping down the voltage to distribute to houses. FWIW I live about a mile from the old, pre-merger with HP, Compaq HQ, and NASA is about 40 miles away. And they can't get the electricity to work properly. Go figure.
Anyway, that fried one hard disk in a 4-disc RAID1 array. [Insert one rude word]
No problem, the RAID array did what it was supposed to and a simple 85-Dollar hard disk replacement had me back up and running.
Then, last week, another hard disk in the array went belly up. [two rude words]
The PC wouldn't boot at all ("checksum error") [three rude words]
So off it went to the local PC repair guy who changed the CMOS battery (a good tip for anyone with an older PC - change it every 2 years come what may), a Windows reinstall and it was up and running.
Trouble is this time the RAID array didn't do what it was supposed to - I think two disks are "donald ducked", the original and the mirrored copy backup - and I lost about 3 days worth of CAD stuff I had done for the wife. [approaching Roy Chubby Brown level of expletives now]
As I type, the second replacement hard disk is integrating itself into the RAID array and the last duff disk is being scanned to see if I can recover the data from it.
If not, three to four days of re-creating the drawings from scratch again. [Roy Chubby Brown and Bernard Manning combined levels of profanities now]
The PC now has a UPS as well as a surge protector, two brand new hard disks, a third on order, a fourth and fifth (one for the RAID array, the other to RAID the boot disk) to be ordered next week, and a gizmo where I can plug in a full size SATA hard disk, without taking the case off, for yet another layer of backup. Short of renting Cloud space at some humungous cost, I should be bulletproof now. However, there isn't a machine built that yours truley can b*gger up....
Just after New Year we had a cold front come through with a lot of thunderstorms, which in Houston usually means huge power surges as the mains cables are mostly still on poles down the side of the roads with "pot" transformers (up the poles) stepping down the voltage to distribute to houses. FWIW I live about a mile from the old, pre-merger with HP, Compaq HQ, and NASA is about 40 miles away. And they can't get the electricity to work properly. Go figure.
Anyway, that fried one hard disk in a 4-disc RAID1 array. [Insert one rude word]
No problem, the RAID array did what it was supposed to and a simple 85-Dollar hard disk replacement had me back up and running.
Then, last week, another hard disk in the array went belly up. [two rude words]
The PC wouldn't boot at all ("checksum error") [three rude words]
So off it went to the local PC repair guy who changed the CMOS battery (a good tip for anyone with an older PC - change it every 2 years come what may), a Windows reinstall and it was up and running.
Trouble is this time the RAID array didn't do what it was supposed to - I think two disks are "donald ducked", the original and the mirrored copy backup - and I lost about 3 days worth of CAD stuff I had done for the wife. [approaching Roy Chubby Brown level of expletives now]
As I type, the second replacement hard disk is integrating itself into the RAID array and the last duff disk is being scanned to see if I can recover the data from it.
If not, three to four days of re-creating the drawings from scratch again. [Roy Chubby Brown and Bernard Manning combined levels of profanities now]
The PC now has a UPS as well as a surge protector, two brand new hard disks, a third on order, a fourth and fifth (one for the RAID array, the other to RAID the boot disk) to be ordered next week, and a gizmo where I can plug in a full size SATA hard disk, without taking the case off, for yet another layer of backup. Short of renting Cloud space at some humungous cost, I should be bulletproof now. However, there isn't a machine built that yours truley can b*gger up....
Alantiggger
Well-known member
Finally , after three and a half years, got round to registering my hard disks with Western Digital, then putting in warranty claims (they're all WD Caviar Blacks with 5-year warranties). Waiting to see if they'll pony up for replacements given I bought them from Amazon UK and I'm now back in the US of A. With a bit of luck I'll have two replacements free of charge, one of which which I can use to replace the one remaining old disk in the RAID array, the other to replace the boot disk, leaving me with just two more disks to buy - one to RAID the boot disk as well, and the second as a removable backup. This PC is going to be IECE SIL4 compliant by the time I finish I swear - shame about the OS (no names but your house probably has a few with glass in 'em and no doubt giving you a fine Vista of your gardens) though - can't switch to Linux, much as I'd like to, simply because of the cost and availability of CAD software, client reliance on Office, etc. etc.
Soon be time for an i7 or Xeon upgrade and a switch to Fenetres-8 I guess.... Did I mention I really hate the new 8 homescreen|(
Soon be time for an i7 or Xeon upgrade and a switch to Fenetres-8 I guess.... Did I mention I really hate the new 8 homescreen|(
Two hard disks sent back to Western Digital under guarantee, waiting to see what they do.
A third (of the original four in the RAID array) went belly-up over the weekend, so I'm not expecting the last one to be around much longer either.
Motherboard fried after I broke one of the SATA connectors in the midst of all this. No socket 775 motherboards with 16 gig RAM support plus 3 x PCI-E x16 left to be had anywhere. Settled for an el-cheapo one with just one PCI-E x16 slot to hold the RAID card until I have permission from the memsahib to upgrade the whole shebang to a 6-core i7 and a proper new motherboard next month.
Used one of the three new hard disks I bought last month to replace the original boot disk, had to buy Winblows 8 to do that as the original Vista 64-bit CD has gone AWOL....
The profanities have reached unprecendented levels, even surpassing the time I fell off a ladder (sober) and broke my heelbone....
A third (of the original four in the RAID array) went belly-up over the weekend, so I'm not expecting the last one to be around much longer either.
Motherboard fried after I broke one of the SATA connectors in the midst of all this. No socket 775 motherboards with 16 gig RAM support plus 3 x PCI-E x16 left to be had anywhere. Settled for an el-cheapo one with just one PCI-E x16 slot to hold the RAID card until I have permission from the memsahib to upgrade the whole shebang to a 6-core i7 and a proper new motherboard next month.
Used one of the three new hard disks I bought last month to replace the original boot disk, had to buy Winblows 8 to do that as the original Vista 64-bit CD has gone AWOL....
The profanities have reached unprecendented levels, even surpassing the time I fell off a ladder (sober) and broke my heelbone....
Yeah, I know, it's got flares. Not as bad as the Sparc 5 I've got in the bottom of the wardrobe, though. That dates from 1994, has an incredibly fast 170 megahertz TurboSparc 5 CPU, an enormous 256 megabytes or RAM and a cavernous 4 gigabytes of hard disk...
Back in 2008 when I built the unit I'm having the problems with, the Intel Q9650 quad-core, socket 775, CPU was pretty much up there with the best of the new i7 CPUs. It still holds reasonably respectful benchmarks and sells new for more than a lot of second generation i7s, presumably because people can fit them into socket 775 motherboards.
I plan on using the Q9650 and micro ATX motherboard to upgrade an even older unit sitting idle in the wife's business, then use this as a trade-off for upgrading mine to a hex-core i7.
Back in 2008 when I built the unit I'm having the problems with, the Intel Q9650 quad-core, socket 775, CPU was pretty much up there with the best of the new i7 CPUs. It still holds reasonably respectful benchmarks and sells new for more than a lot of second generation i7s, presumably because people can fit them into socket 775 motherboards.
I plan on using the Q9650 and micro ATX motherboard to upgrade an even older unit sitting idle in the wife's business, then use this as a trade-off for upgrading mine to a hex-core i7.
Well a big thumbs up to Western Digital.
I sent them two three-and-a-half year old Caviar Blacks that went on me and they sent me back two brand new ones the next day.
Whilst waiting the third of the four in the RAID array went belly up as well. Figure I'll hold off a week or two before turning that one in.
Because I bought a couple, well four as it turned out, new hard disks while I was upgrading and waiting for replacements, not expecting them to turn up, I now have a PC with SEVEN 1-terabye hard disks (four in one RAID array, two in another, and one plugged into a removable drive caddy for back-ups) in the PC and the eighth sitting ready to go back to WD. The old 500 gigabyte boot disk will go in the old PC I'm planning an upgrade on for 'er indoors's business.8)
I sent them two three-and-a-half year old Caviar Blacks that went on me and they sent me back two brand new ones the next day.
Whilst waiting the third of the four in the RAID array went belly up as well. Figure I'll hold off a week or two before turning that one in.
Because I bought a couple, well four as it turned out, new hard disks while I was upgrading and waiting for replacements, not expecting them to turn up, I now have a PC with SEVEN 1-terabye hard disks (four in one RAID array, two in another, and one plugged into a removable drive caddy for back-ups) in the PC and the eighth sitting ready to go back to WD. The old 500 gigabyte boot disk will go in the old PC I'm planning an upgrade on for 'er indoors's business.8)
Similar threads
TRENDING THREADS
-
Is hi-fi really getting better? Our technical editor ponders its progression
- Started by What Hi-Fi?
- Replies: 15
-
-
-
-
-
-
I test OLED TVs for a living – and trust me, different sizes perform differently
- Started by What Hi-Fi?
- Replies: 3
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram