![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Wand of Orcus
Jan. 11th, 2007 09:08 pmA few months ago, my computer started having trouble booting up. For no reason, it would say that a new processor had been installed and ask if I wanted to go into setup. The first time, it happened to my wife, she said no, and after that it started giving me a "non-bootable device" error. I couldn't figure out what was going on with it, so we took it back to the computer store to see if they could fix it. It came back that same day; apparently it just worked for them. They talked my wife into buying a compressed air spray-can thing to help clean it out, for which I don't blame them; our house is very dusty, and the computer shows many signs of that.
A few days later I decided to try cleaning it out with the compressed air. This would have worked better if I had read the little directive on the container about holding it level while spraying. I'd unscrewed the side panel with the funky colour-shifting Klingonesque design, as well as a bunch of tiny holes and a secondary cooling fan. Because of the wires hooking up the Klingon symbol to the power supply, it's hard to open very far, so as I was leaning over trying to spray compressed air through the fan to clean it out, something started dripping out of the spray-can and into the fan.
Since then, the fan has been very sticky. Most of the time it won't start up at all on its own. For a while it would eventually start spinning spontaneously, sometimes jerkily at first, and then more steadily, but it hasn't done that for a while. For a while I tried the Fonzie method on it (i.e. whapping the side of the computer until the fan started), but that's started being less effective, too. Besides, I don't know what else I'm jarring around when I do that, and I don't really want to knock it off the side of my desk, either.
I tried sticking a paper-clip through the holes and nudging the fan into motion with that, but it's hard to do. So my current method is to open up the side panel and give the fan a push with my finger. So far it almost always works, though once or twice it's ground to a halt again in a few minutes.
I suppose I should really either take it in to the shop again, or just maybe try to replace the fan myself. I saw one in Staples the other day that looked fairly similar, and maybe installing it would be within my limited computer hardware installation capabilities. For now I'm just using workarounds.
The boot problem came back a few times, and eventually I realized that somehow it was sometimes swapping the boot order of my hard drives. Once I figured out which one was the bootable one, I was able to fix it, and even write up a set of instructions for my wife. It hasn't done it recently, so I'm hoping it's gone away. The Googling I did on the problem, though, pointed to either a faulty battery (in which case it should have lost the other BIOS settings as well, like the clock time, which it didn't), or a faulty motherboard. The last time it acted up I thought that perhaps the fan problems were causing it to overheat, but since the fan problems didn't start until after the first time it happened, that's probably not that likely. So I may have a faulty motherboard ticking away in there. I should maybe have that checked out before the warranty expires. Because I do so love to take my computer in to be fixed and then have to try to find other things to do with my time until it is.
I'm keeping up with my backups, too. Two DVD-RW's a day, which should finish off my MP3s in what, another week or so? And then I'll see if I can spare any space to back up anything else. Most of it won't take up nearly as much space, though. I'm reusing my last (incomplete) backup's discs, in a less than systematic way, by which I mean that I may delete the backup copy of something before I back it up again. Hopefully that won't screw me up too bad...
A few days later I decided to try cleaning it out with the compressed air. This would have worked better if I had read the little directive on the container about holding it level while spraying. I'd unscrewed the side panel with the funky colour-shifting Klingonesque design, as well as a bunch of tiny holes and a secondary cooling fan. Because of the wires hooking up the Klingon symbol to the power supply, it's hard to open very far, so as I was leaning over trying to spray compressed air through the fan to clean it out, something started dripping out of the spray-can and into the fan.
Since then, the fan has been very sticky. Most of the time it won't start up at all on its own. For a while it would eventually start spinning spontaneously, sometimes jerkily at first, and then more steadily, but it hasn't done that for a while. For a while I tried the Fonzie method on it (i.e. whapping the side of the computer until the fan started), but that's started being less effective, too. Besides, I don't know what else I'm jarring around when I do that, and I don't really want to knock it off the side of my desk, either.
I tried sticking a paper-clip through the holes and nudging the fan into motion with that, but it's hard to do. So my current method is to open up the side panel and give the fan a push with my finger. So far it almost always works, though once or twice it's ground to a halt again in a few minutes.
I suppose I should really either take it in to the shop again, or just maybe try to replace the fan myself. I saw one in Staples the other day that looked fairly similar, and maybe installing it would be within my limited computer hardware installation capabilities. For now I'm just using workarounds.
The boot problem came back a few times, and eventually I realized that somehow it was sometimes swapping the boot order of my hard drives. Once I figured out which one was the bootable one, I was able to fix it, and even write up a set of instructions for my wife. It hasn't done it recently, so I'm hoping it's gone away. The Googling I did on the problem, though, pointed to either a faulty battery (in which case it should have lost the other BIOS settings as well, like the clock time, which it didn't), or a faulty motherboard. The last time it acted up I thought that perhaps the fan problems were causing it to overheat, but since the fan problems didn't start until after the first time it happened, that's probably not that likely. So I may have a faulty motherboard ticking away in there. I should maybe have that checked out before the warranty expires. Because I do so love to take my computer in to be fixed and then have to try to find other things to do with my time until it is.
I'm keeping up with my backups, too. Two DVD-RW's a day, which should finish off my MP3s in what, another week or so? And then I'll see if I can spare any space to back up anything else. Most of it won't take up nearly as much space, though. I'm reusing my last (incomplete) backup's discs, in a less than systematic way, by which I mean that I may delete the backup copy of something before I back it up again. Hopefully that won't screw me up too bad...
