THE COMPUTER THREAD

[Rodneyiren]

So the main problems with my computer would be having to reboot at least once or twice to get into Windows or even Splashtop, overheating in the summer, the computer repeatedly trying to power but failing, and the computer not booting up at all with a lack of motherboard beep (I have managed to start the computer up again by moving the RAM to different slots any time it doesn't beep but I don't know how much longer it will work).

[MartyS (Gromit)]

For both of the previous posts sometimes if the CPU overheats it can lose connection on some pins.  Sometimes removing the chip and reinstalling it can get it working again.  You'll need some of that silver heat sink paste to reinstall the heat sink.

If in a dusty environment you really need to blow the dust off the fins of the CPU cooler every 6 months or so, it's amazing how fast the dust can build up and stop the air flow.

[RVR II]

If in a dusty environment you really need to blow the dust off the fins of the CPU cooler every 6 months or so, it's amazing how fast the dust can build up and stop the air flow.

I've even been negligent in this area and my main computer is Filthy!

[MartyS (Gromit)]

For both of the previous posts sometimes if the CPU overheats it can lose connection on some pins.  Sometimes removing the chip and reinstalling it can get it working again.  You'll need some of that silver heat sink paste to reinstall the heat sink.

If in a dusty environment you really need to blow the dust off the fins of the CPU cooler every 6 months or so, it's amazing how fast the dust can build up and stop the air flow.

There's a place in town that will do a free diagnostic; I'll probably take it there and see what they say. If it's a matter of just re-positioning the CPU I can handle that. If it's a matter of a fried CPU/MOBO, ugh.

I'd actually just like to go to another laptop, but one with beefier capabilities (for media editing), but those are like $7-800. Eff that.  So it's probably another desktop to replace it if it's fried.

I figured since you built it yourself reseating the CPU is something you could try before spending money to have someone else look at it.  Unfortunately a lot of MBs now don't even beep without the CPU, so the only way to check if it's the CPU or the MB is to swap in a known good CPU.  But you could look at the manual for the MB and see what it says about lights or beeps when there is no CPU installed.   Check the warranty on the MB, some of them are 3 years.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

If it was a power surge that blew them the CPU is probably toast, and possibly other things.  If it was a bad voltage regulator that caused the caps to blow then maybe only the MB is fried, unless it was one that feeds the low voltage to the CPU, then that would also be gone. 

[Variety of Cells]

I think I posted this problem before, because I had this issue before I changed my motherboard, but here goes:

I'll be updating this post as I do more test, but maybe someone can diagnose it with the information I have.  I have an asus board, P7P55D-E PRO, and a OWC Mercury Elite Pro 6G SSD.  It's been running fine for about 6 months now since I installed my new mother board.  But now after I shut it down for the night and turn it on in the morning, after the BIOS splash screen it some up with "please insert proper boot media".  Going into BIOS reveals that the hard drive is not there.  This has happened for the past 3 days.  Once I get it working again I can not replicate the problem.  Only after it's shut off for the entire night does the problem recur.

This happened after a while on my previous mother board as well.  I've tried many things to fix it, updating firmware on everything and changing settings.  It always comes back on though... but I'm not exactly sure if any of my actions have any effect.  I've tried opening up the case and unplugging and replugging the drive, but I think I had to restart it two more times after that before the drive was recognized.  This last time I just kept restarting the computer until it came back on after 7 tries.  Tomorrow I'm going to try booting it up, shutting it down, then just leaving it sit for 15 minutes and try again, see if I have any effect at all or if what I'm doing is just a ceremonial dance. 

The problem really seems to be with the hard drive, considering a new mother board apparently didn't fix it (but it's weird that it takes 6 months to show up again).  When it happened before I tried all sorts of different cables and that didn't seem to fix it either.  If anyone has any suggestions other than "Get a new SSD" then let me know.  More of my specs are spoilerd below. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
System RAM: 16358 MB
CPU Name: Intel® Core™ i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
CPU Speeds: 4849
Physical CPUs: 1
Virtual CPUs: 4
Video Card Description: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
VRAM: 1024 MB
Primary Display Resolution: 1920x1080
Multi-Monitor Desktop Resolution: 1920x1080
Microphone: False
Language: English (United States)
Free Hard Drive Space: 35808 MB
Total Hard Drive Space: 228833 MB
Windows Experience Index Rating: 7.7

[Coragale]

Not exactly well versed in these kinds of things, but my old computer was VERY temperamental about what was in it's USB drives at start up. Removing them worked to get it starting up. Maybe make sure that it's set to boot from the hard drive first, perhaps it's trying to boot from a USB or CD and getting stuck on that for some reason.

Other than that, I have no ideas. I don't know enough about SSDs to make any judgments on that front.

[Smith Dr John Smith]

You know it's strange but everyone in my family comes to me for help with computers and I am normally able to help them,I built my own computer from scratch and yet every time I check in with this thread I have no idea what anyone is talking about:)

[Space version 2.0]

Looking for some help in designing a computer. It will mainly be used for games, movies, and reauthoring Rifftrax. I would like it to be able to handle 3D video since the TV I will be using as a monitor will be a 3D TV. So far all I've got is this case and don't know where to go from there.

[Variety of Cells]

Do you have another sata cable you can use? I had one of those go bad on one of my hard drives and I got that error.

Crossed that possibility off.  The problem happened again when I got home.  Except this time my computer had been asleep, then it crashed when I woke it up, and I got the error.  Hard drive wasn't showing up in BIOS again.  This made me a tad nervous.  So I cracked it open and did a bunch of fiddling and testing, including changing the cable from the Sata 6G it normally uses to the sata 3G that my normal drive uses and then used that port.  No good on the first try, but worked again on the second try.  I didn't count, but I must have restarted the computer something like 7 time again.  Now it works with its normal cables.

It must be a problem with the drive.  So weird that restarting the computer something like 7 times is what fixes it... not a reassuring fix.  Guess it's time to back up the drive and call the manufacturer.  Though they'll probably be closed all memorial weekend.  Boo.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

It must be a problem with the drive.  So weird that restarting the computer something like 7 times is what fixes it... not a reassuring fix.  Guess it's time to back up the drive and call the manufacturer.  Though they'll probably be closed all memorial weekend.  Boo.

So many things could be the cause.  Did you try plugging the drive into a different SATA port on the motherboard?  It could be the SATA controller or the drive, but the same problem with different motherboards would point to the drive.

As for why rebooting a bunch of times can fix it.  I've seen this quite a bit repairing old equipment at work, micro-cracks in solder connections around chips can cause disconnects as the temperature changes.  When you turn it on and reboot it a bunch of times the drive warms up and you get flexing and other small moments of the boards in the drive due to the heat of it being on.  Not sure how a solid state drive is built, if there are multiple boards of chips stacked it can have the same kind of problem with the connections between the boards.

[Smith Dr John Smith]

For some reason my computer wants to reformat the 16 gig thumb drive that I had all my scans of Hsu and Chan comics on as a 64 MB drive before it will read it.  it has never had this trouble before,any idea what could be up.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

For some reason my computer wants to reformat the 16 gig thumb drive that I had all my scans of Hsu and Chan comics on as a 64 MB drive before it will read it.  it has never had this trouble before,any idea what could be up.

Is Windows saying the drive is not formatted when you plug it in?  Does it read other thumb drives?  Try a different USB port and/or power down the computer and restart.  Did the thumb drive get wet or stepped on, they can be quite fragile.  I don't keep anything important on them other than to transfer stuff from one computer to another.

[Smith Dr John Smith]

For some reason my computer wants to reformat the 16 gig thumb drive that I had all my scans of Hsu and Chan comics on as a 64 MB drive before it will read it.  it has never had this trouble before,any idea what could be up.

Is Windows saying the drive is not formatted when you plug it in?  Does it read other thumb drives?  Try a different USB port and/or power down the computer and restart.  Did the thumb drive get wet or stepped on, they can be quite fragile.  I don't keep anything important on them other than to transfer stuff from one computer to another.

I tried all my USB ports and it is reading other drives but for some reason it keep saying it needs to be formatted before it can be read and it wants to format the 16 gig drive as a 64 MB drive,I have never seen this happen before.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

For some reason my computer wants to reformat the 16 gig thumb drive that I had all my scans of Hsu and Chan comics on as a 64 MB drive before it will read it.  it has never had this trouble before,any idea what could be up.

Is Windows saying the drive is not formatted when you plug it in?  Does it read other thumb drives?  Try a different USB port and/or power down the computer and restart.  Did the thumb drive get wet or stepped on, they can be quite fragile.  I don't keep anything important on them other than to transfer stuff from one computer to another.

I tried all my USB ports and it is reading other drives but for some reason it keep saying it needs to be formatted before it can be read and it wants to format the 16 gig drive as a 64 MB drive,I have never seen this happen before.

That's not a good sign if other drives are OK, especially since it keeps coming up as a different size.   I've seen them die and be unreadable but coming up as a smaller size is strange.