I’ve got a weird problem with Patricia’s Windows 8.1 machine. It stopped working while I was in Florida, dying without her being able to restart it. When I got back, I turned off the supply, then back on, and then it booted up (though sometimes it took almost forever). But it kept going to sleep without warning, and couldn’t be woken up without recycling the PS switch. I decided it was probably a bad power supply, the original one from the HP that she had bought, but that I’d kept when I upgraded the motherboard a year and a half ago. I went out and bought a whole new case (the HP case was a PITA to work on), and put in an older 580W supply that I’d had from a previous build. It worked for a day or so, but then started to flake out again in a similar manner. Since it was an old supply, I decided to just go out and buy a new one, a 500W for $40 at Fry’s. But it’s still acting up, so it has to be something other than the supply.
What I don’t understand is how it can not even start up the fans when I hit the front-panel switch. I sometimes have to leave it turned off for a while, which indicates a thermal issue, but just what is the signal to the supply from the MB to turn on? Is there any solution to this other than a new MB?
http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html
For ATX chassis that are not proprietary to a specific vendor (HP is not known to play that game) it’s the gray wire. See above.
However when debugging this sort of problem the general advice (and it’s good advice) is to unplug as many peripheral cards from the mother board as possible and whatever external power sinks you might have, such as extra disk drives, CD-ROM drive etc. ESP. video cards, if you have one. Also check all airways & heat sinks are clear of accumulated dust (I assume you’ve done this already) and there are no clogged air filters. If you can restore reliable operation this way, then re-insert each device individually to see if the problem re-appears. If not great! It might have been an intermittent connection due to humidity or whatever that was resolved simply be re-seating the component. If you have a stripped down minimalizist box and it’s still doing it on the new supply check for bad capacitors on the motherboard. See:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/diagnose-hardware-problems-computer-turn/
Good Luck! (Depending upon what your time is worth a new motherboard might actually be a money saver! 😉
It’s a new case, and new power supply, so only dust issues would be on the CPU fan. I just swapped the slots on the RAM, and it quit working entirely, which makes me suspect either memory or motherboard. The only peripheral, other than two SSDs and a hard drive, is a wifi card.
Also if you have a video card, check to make sure it’s fan is spinning.
Sounds like a bad DIMM then, probably the one you swapped INTO the lower numbered SLOT, assuming no strange interleave in play.
Good news, DIMMs are easy to replace. Same $ usually buys 2-4x capacity. In recent years that has been slowing. But they are ginormous these days…
I’ve tried removing one DIMM, then the other, and I’ve unplugged all the drives. The only thing I haven’t done is pull the wifi card (but it’s a new one that I installed when I went to the new case, after the problems started, so it’s not a likely suspect). But now I can’t get the machine to wake up at all. I suspect that the MB’s been dying for a while, and finally gave up the ghost. Problem is that in order to get an exact replacement, I’d have to pay beaucoup bucks for a used or rare new one, since they’re not manufactured any more. And if I go to a new, cheaper, more modern one, it will burn up the second of my three Windows installations I bought for $200 a year and a half ago. But that’s why I did that instead of OEM version, I guess. It makes sense to me to stick with FM2+/Athlon, since she has a pretty fast A10, and 32 gigs of 2133 DDR3.
Oops. Make that 16 gigs…
But the point stands.
BTW, just spent last night getting the ex’s new Windows 10 laptop up on her WiFi network.
I am NEVER leaving Windows 7. It is the last Microsoft product I will ever use. Microsoft’s incessant insistence on exchanging the clutch and brake pedals on every major Window release and I say enough is enough. Then of course Microsoft likes to pretend it is seamless to bring up hardware from other vendors, like her wireless HP printer. Except it was grabbing what looked like the MAC address not the IP address of the darn thing. I had to straighten that out through non-straightforward mods to the printer network port settings, that no newbie would have a chance with.
And then’s there Office 365 with it’s forever rental model. So retro-IBM. You know what MS? I’m fine with either Open Office or Libre Office under Linux. My ex has to have it, but not me. So bye, you won’t be missed.
David, I’m in the same boat as you regarding Win7. I loathe the tiles style interface of 8 plus a lot of other things. I might, maybe, consider 8.1 on a touch screen, but nothing else, and certainly not for my multi-screen desktop. And Windows 10? It’s literally malware plus spyware.
What I have been fretting about for a long time though is whether or not a new PC will be able to run Win7? Or, when my current systems croak, will I be unable to get Win 7 compatible hardware and be forced to go linux or similar for an OS?
Well, the good news, as Windows deteriorates, is that Linux continues to improve.
I give that a +10 rating.
Will Linux get to the point where it’s good for a non-expert?
Rand, you often have problems with Linux, yet you’re far more computer able than me. I really don’t want a computer that’s going to be buggy as heck that I can’t easily fix. I’ve never tried Linux for that reason, plus I’d prefer to keep my old software (Word 2002, etc).
As I see things right now, one option for me it to stock up on win7 compatible hardware. What I don’t like about that idea is I’d need to buy a lot, plus a lot of stuff deteriorates with age whether used or not.
Probably a lot of my Linux problems are a result of my sticking with Fedora. I’ve heard that (e.g.) Ubuntu is much friendlier. It wouldn’t cost you much to build a cheap test machine and take it for a drive.
Thanks for that info, Rand. And actually, I could take Umbuntu (or anything friendly) for a test drive for nothing; I have a couple of spare laptops. Another one I’ve heard good ease of use things about is Mint. I’ll probably give this a try in a month or two (no time now).
CentOS is another one I’ve had good luck with in the past. This is a freeware distribution of RedHat. It’s essentially RedHat Linux w/o their support or on-line updates. A snapshot version in other words. Fine if you don’t live or die on having the latest and greatest of features.
A word of caution, sometimes Linux can be finicky when installing on laptops. Depends upon wether a particular distro supports that laptop or not. Desktops. esp. older ones w/o cutting edge hardware options (read video & sound cards) are usually the easiest to install on. With Linux, the closer you can get to the “canonical” ATX PC with a well-known motherboard the better.
Installing Ubuntu these days is dead simple. In fact, it’s much easier to install than any flavor of Windows IMHO. One trick I’ve done on two different laptops is to shrink the existing Win partition (this required a special utility in one case where files had to be relocated) and then installed Ubuntu on the other half. The Ubuntu installation automatically set up grub to be able to dual boot. If I didn’t have lingering collaboration issues with irksome MS requirements, I’d be tempted to cut the cord completely. As it is, I do most things on Ubuntu (or in Win running in a Virtualbox). Virtual machines might be a nice answer to shifting hardware requirements in the future. Win 7 forever!
Arizona CJ writes:
What I have been fretting about for a long time though is whether or not a new PC will be able to run Win7? Or, when my current systems croak, will I be unable to get Win 7 compatible hardware and be forced to go linux or similar for an OS?
I think it will be some time before hardware incompatibilities creep in to where Win 7 won’t work. Maybe 5-8 years. But you are right it will happen eventually. I would suggest checking out your nearest community college to see if they offer two courses in Linux. One as a user and one as an administrator. If you can take them back-to-back (user first) that would be ideal. Learn well a CLI interface (command line interpreter aka shell) and you’ll discover you can solve or work around almost any problem. Linux is a style derivative of Unix which predates GUI’s and because the earlier shells were ported along with all the GNU utilities it is a very powerful O/S whose main features don’t change every 3 years. The administrator instruction is important in order to learn how to manage installations and as a Linux user you are guaranteed to experience an install or two. After that it’s more or less up to you. If you want to preserve the GUI experience there are choices available (Gnome & KDE are AFAIK the most popular desktops) etc. After about 6 weeks of exposure you’ll be amazed at just how easy it was to migrate. You won’t look back.
The nearest community college is over an hour each way, and that’s in good weather. I’ll see what options I can find for online courses, or see if I can find something with few actual class days.
I grew up using DOS command line extenders like 4DOS a lot, and still write batch files occasionally, and the occasional bit of coding in C++ if I need something I can’t get done any other way. I also build all my own (Except laptop) systems, so I’m moderately okay dealing with drivers, etc, but I have zero OS experience outside of Windows and DOS.
I absolutely do need a windows-like GUI, plus the ability to run some legacy windows software (including some 16 bit, which I get to work on Windows via a VMware virtual machine running Windows 2000).
If it won’t work on my spare laptops (both multicore Gateways, but not high end cutting edge ones) I do have a spare desktop box that’s old and slow (single core, 1mhz, 8 gigs Ram) but would do for a test – I’d just have to borrow a monitor from my main system.
I absolutely love the idea of an OS not changing much. I use Win 7 hacked to look and feel like Win2k, and I still use Word 2002 in spite of having a newer version on disk. I’ve always gone by “if it works, don’t try to fix it”.
Thanks for the help!!!
My old notebook started dying recently, right after I picked up a mech designer job that requires a high end CAD package. I went to the Microcenter location here in Cincy, and found that they still sell Windows 7 systems. I bought a 16 gig RAM and 250 gig solid state drive for just over a thousand.
They have quite a few locations, mainly near college areas. You might consider checking them out; my wife and I are very pleased, and they expect to be selling them for the next several years.
http://www.microcenter.com
I am not employed by them but I am very enthusiastic about their products and services.
One more piece of wisdom, but on PC motherboards a long shot.
Check to see if there is a TOY battery on the motherboard. No not a plaything, but the Time Of Year clock battery. These are usually lithium batteries of some kind. Look around for something with a clip on it. It will be either circular or rectangular. These are dirt cheap to replace. The only reason I mention it is because my ex also owned a Mac Quadra 605 back in the day. When it’s TOY battery finally died it refused to boot! Not even the screen would light, thus no Sad Mac code was presented. After a long adventure which eventually included a trip to a Mac dealer and a price of $600 to replace the motherboard, I tried this fix with a $12 replacement from Radio Shack (had to be ordered, not in stock, sole manufacturer was a company in Israel) and voila, all was well again….
Was the battery from Tadiran? Apparently both old Compaq & Zenth machines used their Li-ion batteries for time & date as well as settings. It’s a pity Radio Shack closed down their local stores. It was the only local place I could get those suckers.
Was the battery from Tadiran?
That name does ring a bell in my memory. All I remember for certain was it was bit of an odd voltage and it was cylindrical.
I’m still thinking a bad capacitor or possibly a bad solder joint that has finally acted up after enough thermal cycles. If you have a schematic of the motherboard or can get one you can do some voltage tracing around it, they call that “flying probe” in the biz. Again, all depends on the amount of time you want to put in.
That is the most common failure mode (was very common for a while when there was a flood of bad Chinese capacitors getting into everything). Take a look and see if any of the capacitors (the little cylinders with two wires to motherboard) have ‘burst’, or even just expanded enough to bow out the aluminum plate at the end. If so it’s probably a write-off unless you’re handy with a soldering iron.
Well, I am handy with a soldering iron. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to do an inspection before I order a new mobo.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, no obvious bad caps based on a quick visual inspection. A new Gigabyte mobo compatible with current CPU/memory is $70. It would have twice the memory capacity, so probably a good upgrade anyway.
What’s the motherboard? They usually have these diagnostic LEDs which indicate the origin of the fault to boot the BIOS. The placement and encoding of the LEDs depends the manufacturer and board. This information should be in the motherboard manual and probably is also stenciled in the motherboard close to the LEDs.
I had a monitor fail a couple of years ago. Took it apart and checked the power supply. First look, all looked OK. Closer look showed one electrolytic capacitor with a VERY small bulge in the top. Replaced all 6 or so, put it back together and it worked.