View Full Version : OT: Burned PC ? :(
Petr Schreiber
23-06-2007, 14:20
Hi guys,
today at 0:45 my PC probably died :'(, I am writing this from inet laptop.
I am posting it here, because I know you all know lot about PCs, and I would like to see if I have any chance to make my PC live again.
Yesterday I worked as normally, and suddenly PC hanged, for first time after XP installation.
Still image on LCD, cursor frozen.
CTRL-ALT-DEL ... nothing. Reset button on case ... nothing. Power button ... nothing.
So I had to disconnect power cable to turn it of. During all the time HDD control LED continuously shined.
When I turned my pet on again, the HDD LED was lighting again, but no output on screen.
Pressing caps-lock, num-lock on keyboard does not make keyboard LEDs light.
First I thought my Radeon got burned, but weird thing is that all fans in case were working as normally, including one on the 3D card.
Just to make me sure I put in AGP another card and still no graphic output and PC can't be turned off regularly.
I can't reach BIOS setup, nothing.
Do you think it is mother board fatal failure ?
When I disconect both HDD, the HDD LED stops shining at the "boot", but this is only difference.
It occured on early morning, so no extreme temperatures, PC was on for ~2 hours.
Any ideas ?
Thanks,
Petr
Michael Hartlef
23-06-2007, 15:17
Ouch,
1) disconnect all drives
2) Remove all PCI cards, leave video card in it.
3) if you have several RAM units, remove all besides one, exchange them in rotation.
It sounds more like the CPU or motherboard is friet, as you get nothing on the screen. Do you get beeping sounds, from the internal speaker?
ErosOlmi
23-06-2007, 20:12
oh dear, I'm sorry.
Follow Mike indications. Sometimes it is just a component. Many times if it is stuck at startup it is memory SIMM. If you have more than one, use just one at the time as see if it makes any difference.
Hope you will be able to recover.
Eros
Petr Schreiber
23-06-2007, 21:36
Thank you very much!,
I will try. I wonder if I have any chance to detect if CPU or motherboard is dead,
to not buy redundant part then.
As fans are working I am more suspicious about CPU now, but can be both. I will see...
No PC speaker beeps, thats weird. It seems it is stopped somehow in early stage.
Thanks again,
Petr
Being so early, no beeps, not getting to the bios. It sounds like the motherboard.
I am surprised it even powers on then though, as most motherboards when in trouble don't turn on to protect you.
But if it sounds like it is working and loading but you are not seeing anything then it is the graphics card.
I am very sorry to hear of your trouble. Those things always happen on weekends and late at night. That never fails.
Hope the solution is simple and inexpensive!!
Petr Schreiber
25-06-2007, 20:05
Hi,
just to let you know I arranged new MB+CPU+RAM today ( it was dead MB ) and I should get it working with my "old" disks soon, hopefully this week. Keep your fingers crossed and thanks for your help again !
Bye,
Petr
Michael Hartlef
25-06-2007, 20:35
Cool, I press my thumbs for you. Were you still on WinME or allready on XP?
ErosOlmi
25-06-2007, 20:47
Good, hope you have solved all problems!
GLad you got it fixed Petr. I bet you are relieved!!
Petr Schreiber
26-06-2007, 08:49
Hi guys,
it seems it could arrive tommorow!
I was already on XPs and just activated them few days before it crashed :P.
I am quite looking forward to it, although I had a nice time for 6 years with the previous Duron based... Hope drives will be ok, and I will happily continue with TopDowning :)
Only trouble I can see is that I won't have any subgigahertz PC at home by then, so tweaking for older PCs will be harder :-\
Bye,
Petr
Forget older computers. As you see they die, look to the future when we have even more power and speed. I hope you will work on shader support and all the cool extensions :) Take your time, just kidding having fun.
I am laying low as I decided to buckle down and learn some win api programming. I am killing 3 birds with one stone as they say. First learning win api... at least a start, second, learning more about C and while I am doing this I am converting the tutorials to Turbo Delphi. I got permission from the original tutorial author to do so and will submit it to him when I am finished. I am learning a lot doing this, but it is time that will give me the foundation I need and have been putting off.
My Goals are to get to work on my life long game with Turbo Delphi, at least that will be my goal. But of course continue work on our projects here in thinBasic also.
I am not sure if I will go with directx for my game or go with opengl. I have the option in Turbo Delphi with both. Before I would have said DirectX, but I am seeing that opengl will do all I want when used with SDL it seems. I might even try it in Java first after I do these conversion in turbo delphi and get some good win api experience.
AS you can see up in the air on this stuff. Also, I will sometime buy a smartphone , PDA or UMC and want to be able to program on those.
I have been hitting many languages again just to see what is out there. Great time for language junkies. Each language has its own great features. I can see how all the things that made C++ so popular will end be its downfall. I can see why Java is so popular and why Microsoft is moving on C# so much and also the new frameworks they are coming out with. Smart on their part. C++ is here and will be here for all the code out there and guys committed to c/c++, but it is not going to appeal to new young guys and I can see why.
Turbo Delphi is so much superior now that I am getting into things more. Even doing win api stuff it is so much cleaner and easier to follow. If you also had a chance to use glscene with your delphi 6, you would see how powerful it is.
Anyways I don't know how I got on this, I guess being so late, almost 6am... I need to get to bed and stop writing. Hope your motherboard comes in and works great for you!!
Petr Schreiber
28-06-2007, 13:22
Hi guys,
I have my uber-PC at home!
Just have to fix some drivers, but wow... finally :)
Thanks,
Petr
RobertoBianchi
28-06-2007, 14:13
uber-PC what means?
Roberto
Michael Clease
28-06-2007, 14:27
yeah come on tell us the spec.
ErosOlmi
28-06-2007, 14:32
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cber
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070626-ibm-supercomputer-blue-gene-p-breaks-petaflop-record.html
;D
Petr Schreiber
28-06-2007, 15:39
Hi guys,
not NASA but compare old and new:
ASKA MB, AMD Duron 850 MHz, 768 MB RAM (100MHz), ATI Radeon 9600 128MB
vs.
ASUS MB, AMD Sempron 3400+, 1GB (533 MHz), GeForce Quadro ( integrated, 128 on board + up to 128 can be shared )
Only that GeForce is not having 100% performance, but I think for integrated solution it has very nice features ( OpenGL 2.0! OpenGL 2.0! OpenGL 2.0! :D). And performance ain't so bad. In TBGL benchmark it outperforms my old system 4 times in hi-vertexcount... And it has shaders 3.0, at least box says that ;D.
I may replace that card with Radeon X1600 PRO Silent ( PCIe, bye AGP ) I have in target on local eshop, but will wait a bit more to drop of its prize :P
Good stuff I can't hear my box now when running, which was not the case of my old good.
Bye,
Petr
RobertoBianchi
28-06-2007, 16:56
Well,
ASUS, ASUS über alles!
Roberto
Petr Schreiber
28-06-2007, 16:59
:D
It has very nice tools attached, for monitoring temperatures and so on.
Maybe it is standard now, but it makes good impression on me so far :)
Bye,
Petr
SOunds great Petr, enjoy and happy computing and pushing those specs to the limits with your creations!!
Michael Hartlef
29-06-2007, 12:38
Sounds great your new system. But why do you want to replace the Quadro, it is a great chip. And in these days, NVidia still produces much better video drivers than ATI. Well, I'm a NVidia fanboy so I will allways opt for that chip.
Petr Schreiber
29-06-2007, 15:25
Hi Mike,
the replacement is far in time I think. Yesterday I tried bunch of new game demos, and all run fine.
It is very good it seems to have own 128MB and you can share up to 128MB from normal memory as a bonus.
Fact is card is slower when using 256MB, so I now run in config 128 onboard + 32 extra for frame buffer.
This way I can play Tomb Raider Anniversary ( released in June 2007) demo at smooth speed in 1024x768.
Only problem can be it seems this onboard chip is a bit fill-rate limited, or it has kind of weird pixelshading algo, as it is very dependant on resolution, which was not the case with my old Radeon.
But I must agree nVidia has also nicer communication with developers as well it publicly expresses their enthusiasm and support regarding OpenGL. I will see, now I can realize I am not in performance crysis :) so ...
Bye,
Petr
P.S. Mike, I also got new 2.1 speakers (with subwoofer) and your TopDown theme rock on it even more than before, we must put this device on recommended hardware list ;)
Petr, glad you are enjoying the new system!