Help! Major Computer Problems~

[DeathStar1]

Well, it all started last week. We don't have a computer in our summer house, so I brought mine down to take advantage of the true 56K Speeds the line offers. However, when I got it in the house and turned it on, either the A Drive, or the Hard Drive(Couldn't tell wich), made a louder than usual buzzing noise. Turned it on and off two times and still made it. Gave it an hour or two of rest, turned it back on, worked perfectly.

Brought it back home, same thing happened, but still worked perfectly. This weekend, same story. Only now, something different. When the loud buzzing noise stopped, the Hard Drive made it's normal startup procedure sounds. The Battery light for the computer came on and went off. But, instead of the normal A Drive booting up, and it going into windows....Nothing happend. It just stayed on not doing anything. Also, for some reason, the picture never showed up on the monitor.

When I moved it, we made sure it was secure, so it didn't budge at all during transport, so I don't see how something like this could happen.

We're going to take it into Best Buy tommorow to see if they can repair it, and upgrade it while where at it, but I was just wondering if anyone here had a similar experience or not...

Also, if it was a problem with the hard drive, I was wondering if there would be any harm in hooking it up to my sisters Pentium 3 Computer? Everything on that drive is backed up on CDR, except my one folder containing all my 3D Work...arghh.. I was hoping to get it startedo n my sisters, long enough to upload it to my server, and then put it back. Was wondering if it would cause any harm to hers..

Thanks!

 

[Max Leung]

Maybe a fan is dying inside the computer? Since the computer has trouble booting, I'd guess that the CPU fan is failing, and the motherboard detects this and stops the boot process.

If the hard drive is fine, it should work in another computer. You may need to make put the hard drive into SLAVE mode using the hard drive's jumpers.(MASTER mode is used when you want to boot from it, usually), assuming you attach it to the same drive that is present in your sister's computer. If you attached it to the cable that also plugs into her CDROM, you may not need to change the jumper.

Be careful when you take it to the shop...some places will reformat your hard drive (or replace it and junk the old one) and you lose EVERYTHING! I hope you got everything backed up...

 

[brentl]

Best Buy will have the computer forever, say there is nothing wrong, then reformat it.
or so I've read at www.bestbuysux.org
Take it to a small shop where you live, chance are thay know what they are doing.
I'd try putting in my sisters computer first.
Brent

 

[DeathStar1]

>>If the hard drive is fine, it should work in another computer. You may need to make put the hard drive into SLAVE mode using the hard drive's jumpers.(MASTER mode is used when you want to boot from it, usually), assuming you attach it to the same drive that is present in your sister's computer. If you attached it to the cable that also plugs into her CDROM, you may not need to change the jumper.

>>

I just tried it in my sisters computer. It didn't seem to recognise it, butI think that's because it's a Dell Computer. Everything was hooked up fine, just hard drive switches, and it said operating system not found. Go figure.

If the Hard Drive is damaged, is there anyway to access even the smallest amounts of data? My 3D Design folder is the ONLY one I didn't back up recently. I can rework everything, but I finally got things in a good form...sigh.

 

[DeathStar1]

>> best Buy will have the computer forever, say there is nothing wrong, then reformat it. >>

Thanks for the link...sigh.... And here I was hoping I could have it back within the week. Problem is, there arn't many mom and pop computer places thatI think would be any better, accept for Software City, and that's a really tiny little computer shop that dosn't have the major supplies of Best Buy.

 

[Jeff Braddock]

Neil,

I don't know if you've tried it or not, but if you couldn't get your sister's comp to recognize your hd, try unhooking hers altoghether and just have yours as the primary. I don't know if it would make any difference, but it couldn't hurt to try.

 

[DeathStar1]

>>I don't know if you've tried it or not, but if you couldn't get your sister's comp to recognize your hd, try unhooking hers altoghether and just have yours as the primary. I don't know if it would make any difference, but it couldn't hurt to try.>>

Yep, that's the strange thing. That's exactly what I did :/. Every peice of her Hard Drive was unhooked, and it still said operating system not found..... It also still had the Dell bootup screen as if nothing else had changed.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

The Dell bootup screen is in the BIOS, not on the HD

 

[Max Leung]

Hmmm, the hard drive might be corrupted. But, before you lament, try looking for a small mom-and-pop shop as mentioned already. The bigger stores might carry a local computer newspaper that could point you to a good small shop.

In Calgary, every computer store carries a newspaper called "The Computer Paper". It has tons of advertisements in it, most of which are smaller computer shops. Most of them have some kind of service option available.

Good luck!

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Worst case scenario, if the hard disk is truly fragged to

the point where you can't get into it and that data means

enough to you. You can send the HDD out to a data recovery

company. It will cost some coin but you can get that data

back.

 

[SarjuS]

you've been moving the computer an awful lot. before the assumption of a dead drive is made, if you know enough about computers you might just want to pop open the case and reseat everything. cards tend to get loose, as do cables. for all we know, the buzzing sound you heard could have been a wire brushing against a fan blade ( this does happen).

more often than not, its the silly things like this that happen.

 

[DeathStar1]

Just an update. We found out it wasn't just the power supply that was dead/or dying, but also the motherboard is completly dead and/or the CPU. So, we told them to replace the motherboard first, and move on from there. Hopefully we'll get another answer tommorow. Oh well, I was planning to update to a P4 anyway....P2's are so 1996

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