Tech Support

[Variety of Cells]

Gadgets break.  Thought it might be nice to have a thread on how to fix them.

To start it off, my DVD player is broken.  Won't power on.  I don't really need it any more, so I figured trying to fix it might be kind of fun and educational, considering I don't care if I break it further. There's a coil whine when I plug it in.  Google has lead me to believe there's probably a bad capacitor.  Now I just need to find out which one!

I found the repair manual online, but I'm having a little trouble reading the diagram.  I understand the concept.  I need to meter each component starting from the power source and find out where the voltages don't add up.  But I can't tell what the proper voltages should be for the components from the diagram. 

If anyone has any tips I'd appreciate it.  Maybe it's a little too advanced for me, but I thought I'd give it a try.  Nothing to lose.

Here's a picture of the diagram.  Spoilered for size.

Spoiler

[abosch]

You will want to get an isolation transformer before poking around a switching power supply like that. The line current is only separated from you by the rectifier bridge; I am sure that you would be affected long before the fuse was. I found this datasheet about part U802 in the diagram and an application note about troubleshooting these sorts of power supplies.

If the whine you hear is coil whine, then that's just a physical thing with the flyback transformer (T801) core that vibrated loose. If the whine you hear is capacitor whine, then the doc suggests looking at the snubber circuit that is connected across the flyback transformer primary; that would be D806, R803, R804 and C805 in the diagram. Note the 1KV voltage rating on the cap and use caution.

*Remember that it's the volts that jolts, but it's the mils that kills.*

[Variety of Cells]

Copy. The main message I got from that was "You don't know what you're doing, don't kill yourself". And that's true, so thanks for the advice.

In another thread Uncle Des suggested that if it's a bad capacitor I might be able to spot the culprit due to it's bulging shape. I did find a bulging capacitor and I'm going to try replacing it today. But if that doesn't work then I won't bother sniffing around with the power on. That sounds above my skill level.

Though I would like to take some classes on electronics repair some day. I'm a set electrician, so the kinds of power I deal with are big, messy and temporary. Would be nice to understand the little stuff.

[Thrifty Version II]

I don't know a lot about DVD players, but from the symptoms you're describing, it sounds like your interocitor might be burnt out.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I found the repair manual online, but I'm having a little trouble reading the diagram.  I understand the concept.  I need to meter each component starting from the power source and find out where the voltages don't add up.  But I can't tell what the proper voltages should be for the components from the diagram. 

That's not the way I would start.  I'd check the voltages at the connector going to the rest of the unit first.  If none have voltage it's probably a transformer problem, if some have correct voltage and others don't then you can narrow down your search to those parts of the schematic.  Since you hear a whine there must be power getting to at least the transformer so no need to poke around on the line voltage side.

What capacitor was bulging?  If it was one of 813, 815, 819, 820 and it was shorted just removing the cap should get voltage back on that line, if not the bad cap may have killed other components. 

[Variety of Cells]

I don't know a lot about DVD players, but from the symptoms you're describing, it sounds like your interocitor might be burnt out.

Really?  Shit.  Just my luck.  My flux capacitor blew last week, and my cat knocked over my cup of ice-nine.  Thank god for amazon prime's free two day shipping.

[d00hickey]

It's not a hardware problem but a software problem, I think you guys might be able to help me.

I recently bought the Mass Effect trilogy, I was about 3 hours into the first one when I came back to it and origin said an update failed. I had some mods on it so I figured that had to do with it. The game would not boot up I just received a message saying update failed. I figured no big deal I would uninstall, re-install without mods and go ahead with my cloud saves. I attempted to delete and and received this message:

The following applications should be closed before continuing the install/uninstall:
Binaries\MassEffect.exe
Binaries\Core\ActivationUI.exe

I checked and neither one of these exe files were running. Then I tried to remove with the windows client, same message, then I manually uninstalled as many of the components from the directory as possible, re load the data through origin and I got the failed update message again. 

There has to be something I can edit or remove from the registry in order to do a full install but I can't find it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

General advice since I haven't played that game:

The most obvious question is: Has the machine been powered down and restarted?  As apposed to sleep or hibernation mode.  If it hasn't been powered down there could be remnants left in ram.

Other thing to look for are temp files that trick the installer into thinking the application is still running if they didn't get deleted.  Now normally you'd see the error message when you go to run the program and it would tell you where the file was that needed to be deleted, but since you uninstalled you can't run the game anymore.......  So it may be a bit tricky to find them, there's windows/temp, several temp folders in my documents, and then there's folders programs create in my documents to hold temp files and saved games.  Many of these folders are normally hidden (application data, local settings) and you have to go into the file settings to allow you to see hidden files and folders.

There's this page with instructions, but not sure if it's for the version you have:

https://help.ea.com/article/manually-uninstalling-mass-effect

Basically google search for: (game name) clean uninstall.  I run into this a lot with anti-virus programs, and least those companies usually provide a program that cleans out all the files and registry values.

[Variety of Cells]

Ggrrrrrrr.  My computer BSODed while I was installing Catalyst Control Center after installing my new R9 280x.  I was able to uninstall then re install and it worked for a bit.  Then it crashed during a game and now I can't for the life of me get CCC to re install properly.  It won't even open up, keeps saying there is either no amd hardware or there was a problem with the installation. 

I'm afraid I'm going to have to reinstall windows   Bleh.  That sounds really annoying.  But spending any more time fucking around in my registry trying to find all the little bits of CCC that are hiding sounds even more annoying. 

If anyone has any ideas I'm all ears.  But if I don't hear anything by tomorrow then I'm just going to re install windows.

[gbeenie]

Does Mass Effect make you install Origin (EA's horrifyingly bad online portal; their attempt to avoid offering their games via Steam)? Cuz that can be problematic.

[d00hickey]

First thing: MartyS, I didn't reset and that was the problem, no matter how much I think I know about computers I still make stupid mistakes. Restarting the computer is ALWAYS the first thing to try when you have problems 

Hopefully I can renew my computer savy self esteem with my next point.

Second thing: Variety, I assume because you overclocked your Qnix you used the AMD patcher. The main disclaimer I recall from that patcher was to run 'reset-all.exe' if you change your GPU, add a new GPU, or update the GPU's drivers.

Another possibility is a defective 280x, maybe try it in a different system if you think that's a possibility, but it's extremely rare.

Congrats though on your new GPU, I persume your going to crossfire it with your 7970. You'll figure it out eventually and you'll be playing new AAA games at 100fps in 1440p

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Ggrrrrrrr.  My computer BSODed while I was installing Catalyst Control Center after installing my new R9 280x.  I was able to uninstall then re install and it worked for a bit.  Then it crashed during a game and now I can't for the life of me get CCC to re install properly.  It won't even open up, keeps saying there is either no amd hardware or there was a problem with the installation.

I remember having loads of problems with Catalyst Control Center on a few machines at work, one solution I found searching was to uninstall and reinstall .net.  And there was some stupid order you had to do the installs for .net, driver, and CCC...  If you don't have much installed it would be easier to reinstall windows than to go through what I did.

[d00hickey]

After some research I found out that leaving that CRU.exe patcher installed caused your exact problem when someone added a new AMD GPU.

[Variety of Cells]

After some research I found out that leaving that CRU.exe patcher installed caused your exact problem when someone added a new AMD GPU.

Great!  Did they say what they did to remedy the problem?

[d00hickey]

After some research I found out that leaving that CRU.exe patcher installed caused your exact problem when someone added a new AMD GPU.

Great!  Did they say what they did to remedy the problem?

Do you have a file called reset-all.exe on your system? it would have came with CRU.exe If you don't have it download it the same way you got the patcher in the first place. You can get it here http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU and run reset-all.exe

After that run the patcher again "atikmdag-patcher.exe"

The instructions on the patchers site say "To restore the unpatched driver, run the patcher (atikmdag-patcher.exe) again and click "Yes" to restore from backup"

I'm not one hundred percent clear on the order to do this but start here.

http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher (the patcher)
http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU (the CRU)

And of course the website from Overclock.net http://www.overclock.net/t/1384767/official-the-korean-pls-monitor-club-qnix-x-star


Another thing written in the patcher section is "CrossFire requires two bridges if the pixel clock is greater than 320 MHz. This is only possible with cards that have two connectors. It will not work properly with more than two cards." Frankly I don't know what a pixel clock is and if this refers to your situation.

Basically to be more concise, I recommend you undo everything you did to get your drivers to allow overclocking monitors in the first place by following the instructions on these pages.

If that fails you can try this. Does your CPU have on-board GPU (something like Intel 4000 or AMD equivalent) just something to hook an old monitor to and make changes in safe mode? If it does plug a monitor into your MOBO, remove the physicale GPUs, wipe all traces of AMD GPU drivers and start from scratch.

After that, if nothing else works, I would back up everything of importance on your C drive, wipe it, disconnect all other storage drives, reset CMOS and just boot it like a new system, re install windows and drivers and relocate your backed up data. Sure it's a pain in the ass but it's also a good excuse to clean your system and getting it running like new. I plan to get an SSD, a CPU cooler, a new PSU with my new GPU and do a full system tune up using this method, mostly because I will be switching my OS drive to a new SSD.

I really hope you find a simple, non time consuming solution. But hey, worst case scenario is a couple hours of work getting your system all shiny and new.