RIP: My Computer

[Coffee Warlord]

Bah. Messing around on the computer last night, bam. Turns off. Okay, weird...turn it back on...power kicks on and....nothing!

Motherboard not beeping == Bad, Bad Sign.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Ouch, you definitely have my sympathy as you're living out pretty much the biggest fear I have that doesn't involve a fatality.

[DaddyTorgo]

ack! sorry cw!

[Danny]

Yeah that sucks, the computer I built four years ago has been so reliable I don't even have my stuff backed up, but maybe I should

[DaddyTorgo]

i backed up a bunch of stuff this weekend (16gb) and eventually i want to double-backup all my mp3's, but other than that i'm all good now (for once).

[flere-imsaho]

So, here's a good one.

After using a PC for 10 years (and using Macs for the previous 13 or so years), I finally decided to go back to a Mac for home. Long story short I'm tired of tech-supporting Windows, especially on a machine I share with my wife.

So, I order an iMac refurb, it arrives, and I set it up on Sunday night. Works great, is really cool, and I use it (and she does) Monday morning to check email and stuff.

Come home on Monday and try to turn it on. Nothing. No beeps, no electrical sounds, nothing. Completely dead.

Called Apple and they're of course taking it back and sending me a good one, but as the guy on the phone said, not a great start, no matter how unlikely that sort of failure was.

[flere-imsaho]

dola,

That sucks CW. On the other hand, view this as a great opportunity to build a new one!

[Coffee Warlord]

Luckily, the hard drive (should) be fine, so my data is all nice and happy. There's a couple more things I need to try before I officially put the machine out to pasture, but they're longshot stuff.

95% chance that a new board, processor, RAM, power supply, memory, and hard drive is in my future. Not the worst thing in the world, since my box was getting a little long in the tooth (and any upgrade I could make at this point meant basically swapping out exactly the above), but still, I wish it coulda waited a few more months.

[Mustang]

I'm impressed that you can post to the internet without a computer. You must be like the Lawnmower Man or something...

[Coffee Warlord]

It's called work. Or at least, being at work.

[Coffee Warlord]

Speccing out my (mostly) new baby...



Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM $69.99

OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ600MXSP 600W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply ... - Retail $89.99

CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TW3X4G1333C9 - Retail $67.00

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - Retail $24.00

Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80580Q9400 - Retail

ECS BLACK SERIES P45T-AD3 LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $309.98 (combo w/ processor)

Putting me at a cool $568.95.

[Eaglesfan27]

This was the most recent new/dead computer thread I could find. My computer is now 5 years old and showing some distressing signs so I'm thinking of replacing it. Is there any reason not to get a new i7 core cpu? Are there any big announcements expected in the next month or so that might drive prices down. Thanks for any info.

[Coffee Warlord]

From the feedback I got from several sources...price. You sound exactly like me, in not wanting to upgrade a lot. The i7 is probably not worth it, especially when you can get quad cores for dirt cheap right now. Same thing goes for DDR3 RAM.

My final build....

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor Model HDZ940XCGIBOX - Retail47927948

OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2F10664GK - Retail47927948

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM47927948

GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail47927948

And it freakin' screams, at a rather significant cost difference over the i7 builds.

[gstelmack]

If there is one certainty in the computer industry it is that whatever you buy today, you could have bought faster/cheaper tomorrow. Just decide when to buy, what's best then, and go for it, no regrets.

Yes I'd buy a Core i7 today. Latest info I'm aware of is:

AnandTech: Intel Quietly Announces Core i5 and Core i3 Branding

What's getting cheaper is not so much the CPUs as the memory and motherboards.

[JAG]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

This was the most recent new/dead computer thread I could find. My computer is now 5 years old and showing some distressing signs so I'm thinking of replacing it. Is there any reason not to get a new i7 core cpu? Are there any big announcements expected in the next month or so that might drive prices down. Thanks for any info.

Check out TweakGuides.com. There's a guide there that the site owner wrote who recently (this year) upgraded his computer, gives the components he wanted, and the reasoning why he chose them. It's a good read, the site is a pretty solid site overall for guides, and as far as I know the site owner is not beholden to any companies so I consider his information mostly unbiased.

[Ksyrup]

So here's a question maybe someone here can answer...

I have an old (at least 5 years old) laptop I got from my old job. It's fine for what it is, which is a mobile way of playing OOTP and some other games, plus surfing the web, without having to use my current work laptop. For the past severla months, this laptop will periodically shut down and give me a blue screen with a bunch of writing on it I can't read because it automatically restarts before I can read any of it. And then when it reboots I get the "your computer shut down so decide whether to start in safe mode" message. Once I get through all of that, the computer works fine for some period of time until, out of the blue, I get the blue screen/reboot thing again.

Basically, I can't play games on it because I never know when it's going to shut down, since it usually will screw up the game I was playing at the time it shuts down. I assume this could be happening for any number of reasons, but in general, is this something that could be fixed, or is it not worth it? I reformatted the hard drive and went back to factory settings a couple of weeks ago, but it still does it.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

So here's a question maybe someone here can answer...

I have an old (at least 5 years old) laptop I got from my old job. It's fine for what it is, which is a mobile way of playing OOTP and some other games, plus surfing the web, without having to use my current work laptop. For the past severla months, this laptop will periodically shut down and give me a blue screen with a bunch of writing on it I can't read because it automatically restarts before I can read any of it. And then when it reboots I get the "your computer shut down so decide whether to start in safe mode" message. Once I get through all of that, the computer works fine for some period of time until, out of the blue, I get the blue screen/reboot thing again.

Basically, I can't play games on it because I never know when it's going to shut down, since it usually will screw up the game I was playing at the time it shuts down. I assume this could be happening for any number of reasons, but in general, is this something that could be fixed, or is it not worth it? I reformatted the hard drive and went back to factory settings a couple of weeks ago, but it still does it.

Sounds like the BSOD (blue screen of death). Could be any number of things, but it more than likely is something to do with your memory. How much RAM do you have, and how much is allocated as virtual memory? Your computer will do memory dumps in order to keep it from completely shutting down, so this could be your problem. Of course, I have not dealt with this in a long time, so this is all just an educated guess on my part.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

So here's a question maybe someone here can answer...

I have an old (at least 5 years old) laptop I got from my old job. It's fine for what it is, which is a mobile way of playing OOTP and some other games, plus surfing the web, without having to use my current work laptop. For the past severla months, this laptop will periodically shut down and give me a blue screen with a bunch of writing on it I can't read because it automatically restarts before I can read any of it. And then when it reboots I get the "your computer shut down so decide whether to start in safe mode" message. Once I get through all of that, the computer works fine for some period of time until, out of the blue, I get the blue screen/reboot thing again.

Basically, I can't play games on it because I never know when it's going to shut down, since it usually will screw up the game I was playing at the time it shuts down. I assume this could be happening for any number of reasons, but in general, is this something that could be fixed, or is it not worth it? I reformatted the hard drive and went back to factory settings a couple of weeks ago, but it still does it.

if you've reformatted and it's still doing it that's a bad sign and you should save what you've got on there that you don't want to lose and prepare for it to cease working, in my experience.

could be the HD deteriorating, or problems in your MBR...hmmm...like Roma said could be other things too, but I'm assuming you haven't mucked around in the guts of it so IMO that's less likely.

[gstelmack]

If you reformatted and reinstalled the OS from scratch, that likely means a hardware issue. Could be any of your hardware really. May be time for a new laptop...

[johnnyshaka]

What?? Cartman didn't break the news on this RIP?? I call BS!!

[Ksyrup]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. It's just a luxury and a free one at that (when I left my last job, they told me I could keep it). I love playing OOTP on it, but I'm not investing hours in a game only to have it corrupted 50 years into a career by an inopportune "blue screen" moment.

[Eaglesfan27]

FWIW, that is one of the symptoms with my desktop. I've gotten 5 BSOD in 5 days which is enough to make me buy a replacement (I also reformatted with no change in symptoms.)

[Toddzilla]

your computer died? it's now a candidate for the hall of fame, I believe

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

your computer died? it's now a candidate for the hall of fame, I believe

Only if it is at least as good looking as Randall Cunningham.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

If there is one certainty in the computer industry it is that whatever you buy today, you could have bought faster/cheaper tomorrow. Just decide when to buy, what's best then, and go for it, no regrets.

And after buying, don't look at listed prices for stuff for a few months.