hardware problems

[mollydot]

Pooty gone splat.
When I turn it on, the power light goes on and I can hear spinny noises, like the fan and/or hard drive, but I'm not getting any beeps.

Anyone got
a) any idea what could be wrong? Lovely Man thinks it could be the BIOS, as it's not even doing the self test.
b) recommendations for repair?

Comments

[cartographer]

Reseating the memory can be a good first move. If something's shifted out of place slightly, your computer might be spazzing.

[mollydot]

Thank you. That should be doable. Hardware scares me a bit, but Lovely Man has replaced memory plenty of times, so can either do it or supervise me.
I didn't realise that components can become unseated for no particular reason. But now that I think about it, it's possible that the table that gets banged by the door is banging the computer, which would increase the possibility.

[mollydot]

Thanks. Like I've replied to cartographer, I didn't realise that could happen, and have now thought of a reason it could.

Just so long as it's not the hard drive...

If it's not a simple thing like that, it looks like it is under guarantee after all. I could only find a guarantee for the CPU, but Lovely Man has looked at the supplier's website (Komplett) and it appears the whole thing has a three year guarantee.

[mollydot]

I think so too, but it's the only one that really worries me. Any other part is just hassle and money, but I've never done a back-up of this machine.

[niallm]

Motherboard or CPU death, I'd say.

[mollydot]

At least we know it's under guarantee now.

H/W Obscura suggestion

[anonymous]

Hi Mollydot,

Just a thought; simple thing but it's known to happen (it did to me). PCs suck air in and blow it out to keep cool. They sometimes collect a little internal layer of dust, and it's conductive. It's possible that opening her up and GENTLELY (try to avoid actually touching anything) cleaning with a vacuum-cleaner's wand attachment may do the trick.

It sounds bizzare, but I had a similar problem and simply cleaning the internals made it all go away.

Darren

Re: H/W Obscura suggestion

[mollydot]

Could be, but it doesn't seem that dusty. Unless a thin layer in the wrong place makes the difference, I don't think that's it.
I had a computer before that had what seems to be heat problems. That was very dusty when I opened it up, and dusting seemed to help somewhat. Running Linux helped even more - apparently it runs cooler than Windows.