Thetownend.com

I've had to pop down the folk's house this afternoon to check my e mails and fuck about on here.

Last night my pc just suddenly turned itself off. I've checked the power cable and it's fine so no blown fuse.

Any ideas?

turn it back on

errr.

can you be a little more vague please?

what happens when you try to turn it on? do any lights come on or can you hear the fans whirring? have you tried moving the power cable from the PSU and putting it back in?

if there's nothing whatsoever, try to find another power cable - if it doesn't work then your PSU might have died. how old is your PC?

Wheres the 'any' key?!!?

Is that what that big on/off button does? Fuck me.

Go back to the cricket forum. :mrgreen:

Sonic, it's gone completely dead.

The power cable is fine cos i bought it down here and it worked fine on my folk's pc.

When you press the on/off switch, nothing happens. No lights, no fan, nothing.

your psu is probably cunted then. bad luck

how old is it, what is it, where did you get it?

2 years old.

My uncle is a PC technician and built it.

I thought you were going to ask a racist question then  :|

Ralphy, Dabs do PSU's for less than £13.

good luck fitting it you mong  :D

[i'll do it for £50]

Cheers Sippo.

Look at the old one and see what output it has (you probably want 500W) and make sure you get the same!

I'd ask your uncle.

If its 2 years old and it turns out to be the PSU then a 350W is ample but make sure its replacement has the same form factor e.g. number of pins 20 or 24 and that its not a microATX as they have a different configuration as well.

If the PSU surged before it blew then it has probably caused the chip or even the motherboard to blow as well.

Replacement PSU - about £8, 5 minutes to fix
Replacement chip around £20-30 takes 5 minutes to fix
Replacement Mobo around £30 takes an hour to fix

Easy repair and not costly :)

i had my old PSU blow up whilst my ear was right next to it. that was very loud...

if you can find out the spec of your PC then someone on here can make sure you get the right PSU...they're much of a muchness unless you need something specialist, which you won't. as jj says it's just compatability.

oh and i'd recommend buying a laptop

Ralphy - I don't want to come across all nerdy and technical but it sounds like it's completely bollocksed.

Hope this helps.

soapy tit wank cheers jim  :D


What spec do you need to know Sonic?

The best thing to do is open up the case and see what Motherboard it has in it, it will be in biggish writing in the centre of the motherboard, and will say something like ASUS 345-7, ABIT 343-v ver 2, ASROCK 775i etc that sort of thing.

When you have that its easy to check the manufacturers spec to see what type of PSU and chip it has, then I am sure if you ask Sonic nicely he can help you fit it :) I would say for a few beers but as he doesnt drink then maybe a handful of beer tokens will suffice!  :soapy tit wank:

My mum will fit it for free ta. Head of IT support at Oxford Brookes 8)

can she get me a job then?

Couldn't you have asked your mum/uncle in the first place?  :D

The old queen is down in Dorset on holiday and my uncle ain't about so you lot were easier to ask. 8)

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/cs/about_us/helpdesk.html

Going back to this.

My PC keeps cutting the power when i'm using the CD rom drive :?

I was just playing FM 2008 and it turned the PC off suddenly  :x

It also switches off when ripping music from cd's onto itunes.

Any ideas why?

The PSU is fine by the way.

Your Mum's fucked it up

mmm Ralphy this is a difficult problem to diagnose, it can be caused by several problems, 1st and cheapest....take the side off the PC and do it, as it may be overheating if it does not power itself down then chances are its not that.

It could be an internal fault with the CD/DVD drive itself, it could be a problem with the ribbon cable itself, maybe even not seated into its slots on the motherboard or into the drive, it could also be the motherboard itself having an internal fault inside the IDE socket, you can get over this by putting a ribbon cable on with 2 or more IDE  connectors on it.

Chances are its one of these 3 solutions.

You need to:-

Right click My computer and goto properties
click the advanced tab
click on settings under startup and recovery
untick automatically restart
ok all the boxes

This wont fix the problem but next time your PC crashes it will give you a blue screen instead of shutting down. Write down the error code (something like 0x00ab0000 - it's in hex) and then google it, you should then be able to ascertain if it's the drive, cable or motherboard.

Cable - £3
Drive - £13
Motherboard - £30 upwards and hassle

Thanks, Uncle Bo's PC Support Service

My PC doesn't restart though, it turns it's self off completely.

The only way it will turn back on is if i unplug the power cable from the back of it, plug it back in again and press the power button.

Pressing the power button after it has crashed doesn't work.
 :?

Which Ralphy is why I gave you details of what it actually could be, if you choose to ignore the fact that I have repaired PC's for 19 years and actually know what I am talking about is up to you  :?  :D

jj - my PC won't boot up, it POSTs but there's no display on the screen and my monitor just cycles back and forth through digital and analog looking for a signal before going into standby.

as far as I can tell the machine POSTs normally - one beep, keyboard lights flashing, fans etc all working fine.

It happens intermittently - didn't work yesterday morning but booted up fine later on in the day. It's not booted this morning and haven't tried since.

Sonic now that sounds like its a problem between the graphics card and the AGP/PCI-E socket, or is it onboard graphics?

As that is the hallmarks of the motherboard being on its way out, have you checked the bios settings to make sure its booting up from the correct AGP/PCI interface, have you reset the bios and loaded up default values as this can be symptomatic of a motherboard/graphics card being overclocked slightly causing it to actually try and run a clock speed faster than it can actually handle.

A bios reset with a load default settings is a start but also check the connection of the graphics card to AGP as a slightly unstable connection can have the same symptoms.

the card is relatively new, about 10 months old so i'd be fuming if it's a problem with that. i've had aq few problems with overheating when playing graphics heavy games for lengthy periods of time, but i seem to have solved that by taking the case off and increasing air circulation.

i was thinking it might be a mobo problem, it's about 3 years old now. don't really want the hassle of replacing it as my card is AGP and most are PCI-E now :(

i'll try the BIOS settings but i previously tried a CMOS reset which didn't have any effect

I must admit if its not a didgy connection the chances are it is the mobo, 3 years with heavy usage can take its toll on mobos especially AGP ones, you can still get very good AGP mobos (depending on whether you wish to replace the chip or not) for around £30-£40 but as you say they are mostly PCI-E.

If you can afford to do a total replace and sell off the AGP graphics card you will be amazed by the speed of PCI-E graphics cards, about 33% faster for the same spec as AGP, but if you are on a budget then just replace the mobo as thats the cheapest of parts.

What processor does it use? if its an Athlon, Celeron or Pent then there are still lots of good cheap boards out there.

If the PC has onboard graphics or you have an older AGP card to stick in there try that and see if the problem persists as I have used several nvidia cards that have failed inside 3 to 4 months usage, ATI seem a whole lot more stable.

get a room

 :wink:

it'a an ASUS A8V deluxe, Athlon 64 3500+, Geforce 7600GT.

i don't want to go down the cheap route, i'll do a proper overhaul when i can afford it - i need a temporary fix to be honest :?

A8V's are what I recommend for cheap AGP build TBH they are a good mobo and still available for well under £30, about £27 from ebuyer and dabs I think, same spec as I built my missus but I used an ATI x1950pro card which was £75 compared to £55 for the 7600GT, but the 7000/8000gt cards are reknown for unreliabilty, so please check that first before you spend any money on a mobo!

sorry getting into geek mode  :oops:  :D

Its ok

just yankin yer chain

 :mrgreen:

Isn't the Mobo a music of black origin award?!?

Yes honky.

I am sure that was a mofo!  :D

What was that about getting a room?

Have you tried rebooting? 8)

when my laptop boots up i sometimes get a error messsage but i can't remmber what it is so this post is pointless

Looks like my CD drive is fucked :(

Sonic, you advised me to get a lap top earlier in this thread, just out of interest, why?

I'm more likely to have a new pc built because I got a 19 inch Hewlett Packard LCD monitor for my birthday. The picture quality is awesome.

My current PC is a 1.8 GHz AMD Sempron Processor
512 MB RAM
112 GB Hard drive

You can get a decent cd drive for less than £20 Ralphy.

Your hard drive, RAM and CPU are unlikely to make the graphics on your monitor better. Make sure you get a decent graphics card for that, but then don't go too overboard unless you're using it for gaming.

because i've grown to hate my PC and love this laptop.

Si, in modern terms, how far behind is my Processor speed wise?

To run games like FM 2008 quickly and smoothly, is 1.8 GHz and 512 MB RAM sufficient?

I've sourced a new CD drive for £25.

There's a big difference between a game like FM2008 which isn't very graphically advanced but does loads of data processing in the background and something like Bioshock or whatever new PC games are out recently.

For FM your graphics card won't need all the latest fancy light shadery stuff but you'll probably get a good speed boost when playing with more teams with more Ram and Processing power.

That is unless FM has changed drastically since I last played it anyway.

Any idea how I can quickly find out what Graphics card my PC has?

Will it tell me in windows anywhere?

It will run FM2008 fine, though looking at the min system requirements, your pc is only just good enough.

Rather than build a new pc, you could just buy an Athlon Dual Core processor (much faster) and upgrade your memory to 1 or 2 gb. This would be fairly inexpensive (about £150 for some pretty decent kit).

Thats what i'm thinking of doing Si.

I just googled ''find out graphics card info'' and got this........


http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36253


I tried this, and where it says 'device' it appears i have no graphics card  :?

Says N/A next to all the headings.

Current display resolution is 1152 x 864 32 bit 1 Hz.

Ralphy - do the same run thing but type in msinfo32 instead.

Then select "components" in the menu tree, then "display"

Yep just did that, nothing came up in the right hand side :?

Right click on your desktop and select properties and then go to settings. There should be a drop down box with your display adapter listed

CD drive £3.99
or
DVD writer SATA dual layer £18.99

500GB 16MB cache SATA disk drive £50.99

Motherboard £27.99

Athlon 64 3500+ CHIP £22.99 includining cooling fan

Kingston 1GIG PC2-5300 ddr2 RAM £14.99 (2gig £29.98!)

About 1 hour to fit and reinstall Windows

Would be about double the speed of your Sempron 1.8 which is archaic.

A good PCI-E graphics card to go with it....ATI x1950pro top spec graphics card £75.99

Brand new case £9.98

500W PSU £8.25

All prices include VAT but not delivery if all ordered at the same time delivery is free.

If you wish to reclycle disk drives/case/PSU etc then obviously the price would be well under £100

There thats how cheap it is for a brand new system that would run circles round what you have now.

Right, whilst people are feeling helpfull - how easy is it for me to swap all my gubbins into a new case?

The one I've got is piss poor for air flow and it's too noisy (mainly the PSU fan which doesn't have a speed control and is constantly on full). The CPU sits at around 27c in idle and upwards of 46c on full load. I'm eyeing up a new Antec case with a ultra-quiet PSU and going to get a new ultra-quiet CPU fan and heatsink.

To be honest Samdy.....I did that yesterday, just remember where all the cables go and it will be done in under half an hour max.

Just make sure you make a note of the cable connections for the LED/SWITCH/HD the new case will have all these labelled but if you make a note exactly of where the old ones came off from its no problemo at all, you can get a nice full size case without a PSU for under £10 from ebuyer or dabs.

If you want an Antec ultra quiet you will need to spend about £70-80 like this one http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128045

Antec cases are pretty good in my experience. I like my one but where it's only a mid tower it's pretty difficult to work in with most of the PCI slots populated.

Sam are you going to get that Arctic Cooling heatsink? I'm so impressed for something that cost just over a tenner plus p&p

Yep. And I'll whack a few more case fans in and get one of those speed controllers.

John Hughes' third directorial effort, Weird Science, follows in the tradition of his previous teen-centered films, Whoops! There go my genitals and Has anybody seen my anus? Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith play the wannabe hipster sonic youth and his nebbish weak-willed best friend, jjedmunds, a pair of high-school geeks who are hapless with members of the opposite sex. Using jjedmunds' computer, they create what they believe is the ideal woman. A lightning storm brings that woman to life, and she takes the form of Toni's mum. Toni's mum sets about building their self-confidence, but trouble begins brewing when jjedmunds' cruel, military-minded older brother, Oevil red (Bill Paxton), begins to realize that something is not as it should be. Hughes would finish his cycle of high-school themed films with his next movie, ralphy's Day Off.

:Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

I just disconnected my PC completely and polished and dusted my desk.

God i'm bored.

I took the case off and the motherboard and fan were caped in dust  :o

Did they have an "S" or a bat on their tops?

caked in sorry  :oops:

Just fuck off ralphy

Love you too Deano.

I didn't realise you could get a 1.5 TEREBYTE hard drive  :shock:

Who the fuck needs 1500 GB ?!

Now and again I come across a thread that makes absolutely no sense to me and makes me feel like a bit of a div.

This is one of those times...............................

its normally a good thing if in relation to this thread  :wink:

people who help keep these evil piracy websites going...

I've got over a terabyte. Will probably never use it all but you never know. I couldn't imagine using 20gb a few years back and now I'd struggle to keep less than that.

I guess a few years back you weren't downloading TV/ movies/ music of the net all the time.

I haven't actually downloaded anything in months, which is the irony. I expect now my tv card is fully working I'll end up recording a lot of shows which takes up room too.