|
Post by crash46 on Jul 16, 2008 2:30:07 GMT -4
I'm just sitting around doing my usual business on my computer and all of the sudden my screen turns black. The computer was still on, just nothing was happening. The monitor still had a green light by the power switch, instead of the orange one that it would do if it was not receiving a signal. I hoped and prayed it was a monitor failure (it'd also give me an excuse to replace the one with which I'd been 12 years faithful), but plugging in my other monitors didn't do anything. I rebooted the computer and after displaying the Dell logo, it just gave me a flashing cursor in the top left corner of the screen. Two more rebootings yielded the same result. I turn off the computer and go up and watch the rest of the All-Star game, which took a while. I came back down to give the computer one more shot, and the Windows splash screen came up, and even though it flashed to black twice as if it was happening again, it did boot up this time and is running now. What the hell. So is my hard drive just about toast or what? Anyone know (ie. Sunny? .)
|
|
|
Post by blahblahblah on Jul 16, 2008 14:48:37 GMT -4
Wait, so everything is back to working now?
From speculation, I can think of two possible reasons.
1) Overheating. It is possible that your processor has overheated and shut itself down. This would also explain why when you tried to reboot immediately, it wouldn't. It may have needed to cool that before it boots. If that ever happens again, try to see (don't touch, obviously) if the the inside of your computer is hot. The solutions to this are cheap and simple. There might be too much dust inside, blocking air circulation of the fans. Just buy a can of compressed air and open up the case and spray all the dust off the motherboard, fans, etc. Check to make sure the fans still work, because if they don't, you should replace them.
2) Power Supply problems. If #1 is not the case, it's very likely to be #2. Power supplies can fail after they age. You can find a cheap and half-decent one at Fry's for like $20. Unless you are planning on overclocking the hell out of your processor and doing insane gaming/video-editing, you don't need an expensive one. In fact, that might just add more to your electrical bill for absolutely no reason.
|
|
|
Post by crash46 on Jul 16, 2008 22:55:06 GMT -4
Yep, everything has worked fine for me all day. I was really freaking out about the possibility of hard drive failure until I remembered it normally makes clicking noises when it's about finished, and you didn't seem to believe that to be the case at all. There is plenty of dust inside the case, so hopefully that's the end of that. The fans are still operative, though occasionally noisy (not as often as it was before I oiled them though).
|
|
|
Post by blahblahblah on Jul 16, 2008 23:08:43 GMT -4
If you had a hard drive failure, you'd be f***ed. There's no way you can salvage anything back and there'd be no way for you to boot into Windows. When it's gone, it's gone. So, that's definitely not the case.
|
|