The end - of my PC's life?

Yesterday and today I found my PC not working anymore after briefly leaving the room. I could not start it up by pressing the Power button in my PC-case, only by turning off-and-on the power block to which it is plugged in. Is this a motherboard failure of kinds? The end is nigh? I bought it in June 2001 - 4 years is the limit?

This stuff happens sometimes. I haven't gotten to the bottom of what causes it, but if it is any relief, the same happened with my brand new desktop a week back.

Having said that, it could of course also be a power supply coming to the end of its life. (And before you ask, there's no way to predict how long that is.) They can be changed without changing the entire PC. Sometimes even just swapping the power cable will help. I've had that happen.

And if its not the power cable, what is it then that should be replaced? After all, as u know I need to replace the HDD as well.......(Perhaps I should slowly think of getting a new machine altogether? )

A quick look at my regular PC store gives the following for a new low-end PC:


That's the components, having them built together costs 20-40 euros unless you know how to do it yourself.

Good suggestion.

Advaita das, how much money can u blow?
Here good ol´Germany it´s cheap, too.

Two friends of mine have a computerstore.
They would easily build u a new machine, according to the money-limit.

But how to get it sent to you in the Netherlands, right?

Yes, it would have to be really cheap to benefit after adding the transport costs from Germany to NL. Here a desktop costs about 650-700 euros, in the shop.
Besides I would have no warranty, and even if I had one, I'd have to go to Germany to get it fixed. That wont work I'm afraid. Danke, trotzdem!

True.

Bitte schön.

Most German shops will ship it to your door for 20-30 euros. I've ordered hardware from Germany (since it really is a bit cheaper there) myself, and haven't really had any issues with warranties. Personally, I haven't had anything broken, but some fellow computer folk have had experiences with this, and most have had decent response times; three-four days in mail one way, one week for processing, three-four days back. Many shops here in Finland take two weeks to get it done. Just pick a shop with a good reputation.

4 years of home use is nothing. where I work (laboratory) we have ordinary computers being turned on 24/7 continuing to work just fine for 7 or more years. I still have one or two that run Windows 3.1

what you describe looks like software freeze-up. the reset button will work in these cases if you just hold it pressed for 10 seconds.

"I could not start it up" ... "only by turning on and off the power block" most certainly doesn't look like a software freeze-up.

Power-supply?

Netzteil futsch?

Oh. Power-supply. I thought he was talking about the switch on the extension cable... Because that's happened to me a couple of times over.

Sometimes, if the "powerblock" (power-supply) is going crazy or is coming to death, the PC has freezes, hang-ups and crap like that...
Maybe the Power Supply is (was) too weak?

Sometimes they build in really crappy power supplies (Netzteile) from no-name labels and with 300 watts...

Just thoughts.

Here we're talking about an elderly AMD 550MHz machine, if memory serves, with a built-in graphics adapter. Such PCs aren't that power hungry.

One thing that causes freezign is the CPU overheating. The most common reason for that, short of the heatsink falling off, is excessive dust stuck in the fan and the cooler that prevents it from doing its job properly. The remedy for this: Take off the main power cable, remove the case, take your vacuum cleaner and carefully suck out those three kilos of dust.

I bet your PC hasn't been opened up for a year or two? I once found large spiderwebs inside a friend's PC that hadn't been cleaned for a couple of years.

Whooops, , right. So even 250 watts are fine.



This is really true.

A friend of mine gathered that much dust, one couldn´t recognize the colour of the Big-Tower inside and the dust was FINGER-THICK, no joke.

The graphic-card and its blocks and chips and whatever were covered like roses in a huge snowfall.


Vacuum-cleaner-yajna!