For the record, if I do go inside my computer, I’m unplugging everything. I would be terrified to do it any other way.
The mysterious clicking noise DID NOT occur the last time I powered up the computer. And I powered up the computer with a floppy and that had no problem.
Nevertheless, I think my computer is probably nearing the end of its useful lifespan and there’s only so much tweaking I can do to it to make it better.
But I still want to know what the problem might be if this system gives up the ghost before I can get a new one.
On a very similar note, I have a mini-tower at home that for some reason refuses to start on the first shot. The “front” power button has never really worked, in fact looking now, I see there isnt really, one, just some dopey snooze button. We have always shut down through windows, and then turned off “at-the-back” (main PS switch). We turn it on with the same switch.
Every thing is lovely and fine and all of that, except for one prob.
When switched on, I get up the “makers screen” but the boot does not proceed. Repeat 3-6 times. On one of these switch-ons the boot will proceed as normal, with the standard peep and we are up and running. The box is about 5 years old but in excellent condition, apart from this one glitch.
Well, try putting the cables back off/on again & take the cards out & put back in.
After 5 years, they often need this. That’s why some local computer shops have a
‘tuneup special’ where they do this, or at least ours did.
Try techbargains.com on the main page they usually have a list of deals on computers.
around the web as they don’t sell them. I really like them. Recently
they had a nice 1.8pentium with XP home, etc, for around $380, free shipping. sans monitor, of course.
but they have a fifteen inch one for $50 in the forum.
Before you enrich the American economy, let me tell you about the experience I had last week with a friend’s computer.
He had been suffering the same symptoms as you for a month or two, and came to see me when the machine finally would not completely boot.
His hard drive seemed to have a problem starting, which I worked out by realising that the clicking sound was synchronised with the hard drive light. The disk kept on trying, with some groaning and wheezing as the platter spun up and down.
After booting from a floppy, I ran scandisk on the drive (he was using Windows), and selected the surface test option. Sure enough, 3 bad blocks were found on the disk. One was in some unimportant file, but two of the blocks were being used by the registry file system.dat. Scandisk marked the blocks as bad (so the hard disk would no longer try to write to them), and away we went.
The first boot prompted Windows to use its backup copies of the registry files, the machine booted cleanly, and has worked fine since.
His machine was around the same age, and as the scandisk program noted, bad blocks can be a sign of impending failure of the drive. I have seen this before, but the number of blocks in those instances were in the hundreds, rather than three.
Marcus, that seems like a nice idea to try. Of course at 5 years one would want a new computer
or at least backup the old files too. I find alot of people who spend $1000 on a new computer but won’t pay
$50 for a maintenance program.
i’m surprised it too so many posts before gazpacho recommended a wrist-strap (unless i missed it earlier).
it’s the simplest and most logical solution. that way, no matter what you touch, your grounded.
surprisingly enough, i could swear i did read in PC world (of all places) to leave the thing plugged in. i was totally surprised.
in a worst case scenario, if i have to, i’ll touch the screw on the outlet before i handle any components…not saying that’s the way to go, but it’s better than nothing!
For those who might have been concerned about what the real problem with my computer was, the answer is: the power supply.
On Saturday night, the computer just went black, lost power, and wouldn’t start up again except for brief instances.
I need to rescue my hard drive now to transfer the data into my new unit, which is really cool. I’m amazed I put up with a computer that old when I could buy a much better one for the same amount as I paid five years ago.