Monday, August 23, 2010

more computer issues

I was reading over my old posts from this year, and realizing that I have yet to tell 'the rest of the story' (thank you Paul Harvey) about my computer problems. So for six months, my desktop worked fine. I reloaded all the software, most of it available by download. I had replaced the mother board, power supply, hard disk, and upgraded the RAM, and all it was all working well. Until my computer just shut off again in the middle of web searching. So, obviously I had not fixed or replaced the correct component, even after all that trauma. Back to the drawing board. I figured that it was fairly unlikely that one of the new components failed, mostly because the main symptom (computer just shutting off) was the same. Still, I kept the possibility of inadequate power in my mind. So the only things I didn't replace that had to do with power and computation were: the power strip connecting the box to the wall, the AMD chip (the processor) and its cooling fan, and the video card with its cooling fan. My stepdad reminded me that a hot chip will shut down a system fast, and so, after replacing the power strip, I ran the desktop with the side panel off to watch the fans. And there was the problem...the cooling fan on the AMD chip was not spinning. And the chip could take some heat, but when I was doing a lot of intense processing, it couldn't cool off, and it shut down the system. Good news was that everything on the hard disk was still okay...because I hadn't tried to reboot right away with a processor that was still hot. If it shuts down while trying to load Windows, that is when you get those nasty 'hive' errors.
Still, it was time to fish or cut bait, and I decided to quit cutting bait and start fishing for a new desktop. So now, I have a bunch of computer parts to build up dear husband's older computer, and I have a new computer with an AMD Athlon II, Windows 7 (making the switch wasn't bad at all), 5 Gigs of RAM and a Terabyte of hard disk space. Oh and a beautiful new monitor. You may envy me now.

1 comment:

  1. Oh my gosh, I do not envy you! I envy your savvy though. I just saw that I have failed to post to your blog several times in a row now. I think I keep forgetting to type in the code.

    Very excited about Brianna's return to school!

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