In the last few weeks I have had some minor problems with my desktop baby, and to my slight surprise I have been able to diagnose and fix both of them. Here's a quick rundown...
Problem 1: Loud ass noise coming from my computer while it's running.
This one was simple, it's gotta be the fan right? Sure, but which fan? A lot of new systems (desktops) have two fans, one for the power supply and one for the cpu. The CPU fan would have been a bitch to change, the power supply one, not so much. So I woke up on a Sunday (a few weeks ago) morning, took a ripper and began disassembling my PS. 12 screws and lots of dust later I got to the supply. I read online that there is usually a sprocket or some type of gear that you can apply oil to in order to minimize noise, unfortunately that was not the case for my supply. Instead I found a sticker and some basic circuitry under it. I cleaned out the supply box, spun the fan around and cleaned it out and put my PS back together followed by installing it back into my computer. Crossing my fingers I powered up only to be rebuffed by a sound that can only be described as "a sound that tells you something is definitely wrong". It was like a muted buzzer. Looking at the machine I noticed that my diagnostic lights were on. using my laptop to look up what they meant, I realized that an unseated RAM stick could be the cause. Opened up computer, reseat both sticks (2 512's), close up and reboot. Voila! Boot up and no noise whatsoever, in fact I think it might be running quieter than it did before.
Ade +1
Problem 2: I return home from work greeted by darkness on my first monitor and a blue screen on my second monitor (I run dual 19's)
Anyone who has ever owned a PC should be familiar with the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). It is a windows error screen that tells you nothing about what could possibly be causing the error, at least not to the layman which for all intents and purposes is all of us. "Page Fault in non page area"? "Fatal Exception"? Come on now, why put in a screen that tells you that you have an error but make it so that you can't even understand it. Thanks MSFT, dicks. The BSOD usually has some numbers on it like 0X0000007E or 0xF78aD3B4. Believe it or not, these actually mean something although the numbers generated can be caused by a mix of things so even if you knew what they meant you still would be lost. After checking many forum posts from my laptop (it is 1000x easier to diagnose a problem with google, in fact I can't imagine taking my machine to a computer repair shop anymore, I hope I don't have to eat that statement in the near future) I realized that I would need the Windows Recovery Console to diagnose this further. One HUGE problem, most CD's that come with a computer these days are not actually the XP install cd but some OEM (Original equipment manufacturer) cd with restore garbage programs on it. It may contain the files necessary to set up windows, but for doing diagnostic work it is useless. Thanks Dell for charging me for an OS but NOT giving me the shit I paid for, fuckin Mike.
Anyway, I borrowed a CD from work and began the diagnosis the next evening (after the original problem). By the way, I did read that a possible cause of the BSOD was a hardware failure of some type, be it HDD, RAM, Graphics card or PS Fan. Thinking that this was def a software problem I neglected to check my hardware. Besides, I ran the HDD scan from my boot menu which told me I had no problems. Also while looking for diagnostic tools I ran across BartPE, if you want to know more about pre-installed environments, check out this guys page. Pretty neat and easy to understand. All the same, I ran the recovery console and was sent to a dos prompt, wait, what? I thought this thing was supposed to repair my windows, not have me looking at dos prompts. Running CHKDSK /r (check disk and repair problems) I was told that I had an "Unrecoverable error on my HDD". Fine, screw the recovery console I ran BartPE (which also needs the CP cd to create the build of the program) and it tried to start but then i got another BSOD. What the fuck?! Everything I run gives me a BSOD, no software is working, one tool says my HDD is fine and the other says it's fucked. That is when I had the idea, "I wonder if it's my RAM". Open up computer, remove one stick, power on. Boom, normal boot up. To confirm I removed the other stick and stuck just the one I had just removed back in, then BSOD. There it is, bad RAM causes BSOD, remove RAM and upgrade (I am currently typing this with only 512mb, tough in this day and age). Moral of the story, if you get a BSOD and you did NOT a)just install new software b)just upgrade software c)just install a new OS for dual boot or d)just install a new Hardware device AND it's drivers this is most likely a hardware problem. Use tools to check your HDD, make sure your RAM is not the problem and make sure your fan is running. Graphics card is a little hard to diagnose, but if it's not the other three, then it probably is your Graphics card.
Ade +1
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