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Compter Help Needed

imaguitargod

imaguitargod

I know we have some PC geeks here so I thought I might post this question. My dad's got a PC (with Windows XP Home Edition) and baught it new 3 years ago despite my advice to get a Mac. Low and behold it's now failing him and guess who's fault it is...mine of corse. He says that he's never had problems with it until I came home. It's my fault because I keep opening more than 7 windows in AOL. (Needless to say, we don't get along).

Knowing more than he does about computers I know what the cause is (besides buying a PC...their designed to fail rather quickly). He's never done any preventative maintance (ie: defraging the hard drive) or opening the case and blowing out the dust. Nor has he downloaded new updates to his virus scan OR renewed his subscription for it (6 months expired).

The Symptoms: The fan ran on full blast all night the other day (he came in and shut the computer off because it was keeping him up). Now the computer has restrated all on it's own twice today. It then gives a message that "Windows has recovered from a serious error".

My Guess: I think it's a hard drive problem.

Anyone have: An idea of what this could be? Think this could be solved with some program like Disk Doctor (and does anyone have one they could burn for me and mail it, I'll send ya some money)?
 
first up - run a checkdisk.

Double-click My Computer, and then right-click the hard disk that you want to check.

Click Properties, and then click Tools.

Under Error-checking, click Check Now. A dialog box that shows the Check disk options is displayed,

select the Automatically fix file system errors check box,

select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.

If it asks you
"do you want to schedule the disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer"

click Yes

let it run - it will take some time...

restart.
 
I would tell him the computer is dead and insist he get an imac, if you want me to call him I will. By the way, you spelt bought wrong, hah. Thanks for the review of the Nuclear Nutterz, you were right, there was a comma missing. D T
 
bentalphanerd said:
let it run - it will take some time...

restart.
Click to expand...
I take it once it restarts it'll run again to make sure it fixed problems? How long will this take? Is it a "overnight" thingg or should I run it during the day so I can check on it?

DickT said:
I would tell him the computer is dead and insist he get an imac, if you want me to call him I will. By the way, you spelt bought wrong, hah. Thanks for the review of the Nuclear Nutterz, you were right, there was a comma missing. D T
Click to expand...
Na, no call is nessicary but thanks for the offer. He's a hard headed asshole so trying to change his viewpoint is like attempting to create a long standing black hole with a particle accelerator from the 1980's.

No problem about the review. I'm always there to lend a helping hand. PS. If you need a review of the product or a taste tester, you know who to call ;)
 
First of all, don't blame it on the poor PC.
I want you to check three things: temperature, memory and hard drive.
For the temperature I would suggest HWMonitor (it'll help you monitor other things as well), for memory memtest and you can find here the best diagnostic tool for your hard drive.

Most failures are the cause of a certain writing error, like bad caching and such. those problems could be the cause of bad components like memory (RAM), hard drive, graphics accelerator and even motherboard at some level. this could be due to high voltage, low voltage, unstable voltage, high heat, bad cached memory and a bad sector.
Just like real doctors, we'll look for some of the other symptoms usually related to those problems, in purpose of finding the exact one.

Might be because of bad maintenance and luck.
 
umm yeah - if it says it needs to restart to run - then restart. If it runs immediately - restart after the check.

depending on the problem, it can take an 5 mins..can take over an hour. If you're going to leave it on overnight - turn off screensavers & hibernation stuff, they'll just confuse it lol
 
Omri said:
First of all, don't blame it on the poor PC.
I want you to check three things: temperature, memory and hard drive.
For the temperature I would suggest HWMonitor (it'll help you monitor other things as well), for memory memtest and you can find here the best diagnostic tool for your hard drive.
Click to expand...
Did I mention I'm on 56K and downloading times out most of the time?

I'll work on trying to get a friend to D/L that for me.
 
Will do, one of the projects i'm dabbling with is a hot ranch, but since i found this site I want to start exp with other peppers. I saw your pics of you eating that Naga Morich, you said it had a fruity taste. Do you think it would go with ranch, also is that pepper pretty common, would most spice houses carry it? Just to note, most dads are the same. D T
 
imaguitargod said:
Did I mention I'm on 56K and downloading times out most of the time?

I'll work on trying to get a friend to D/L that for me.
Click to expand...
HWMonitor + Memtest = 369KB
The good ones are never huge.
 
DickT said:
I saw your pics of you eating that Naga Morich, you said it had a fruity taste. Do you think it would go with ranch, also is that pepper pretty common, would most spice houses carry it?
Click to expand...
Yep, a nice fruity taste. Most spice shops will not be carring it however, bit outside of the norm I think.

DickT said:
Just to note, most dads are the same. D T
Click to expand...
Not like this one. Mom and I think he's bi=polar, one minute he will be your best friend the next he'll jump down your throat. Very verbally abusive (thank god he's not physically abusive though).
 
bentalphanerd said:
56K :shocked: you have the horse, but no cart
Click to expand...

Hey!


Some of us manage to get by just fine on dial up.


Imaguitargod, if you've been surfing with no virus or spyware protection or even Microsoft updates, you may have picked up a nasty.

I would suggest you download spybot and give it a scan.


I would also mention that anyone using AOHell has no room to whine about PC's. The source of your problem might even be all that AOL crap, if it was recently downloaded.
 
The fan running full blast means that the CPU is doing overtime.

smells like a system file conflict or similar. diskcheck should sort it then get the latest windows updates & update your AV.
 
Pam said:
Imaguitargod, if you've been surfing with no virus or spyware protection or even Microsoft updates, you may have picked up a nasty.

I would suggest you download spybot and give it a scan.


I would also mention that anyone using AOHell has no room to whine about PC's. The source of your problem might even be all that AOL crap, if it was recently downloaded.
Click to expand...

Ugh, believe me, if I had my choice we wouldn't even be using this horride excure for a "internet provider". But this is Rich's machine and we signed up for AOL back when it was hip....and that's all he knows now.
 
Was it a Dell computer????....I won't go into how much they suck but all our Dell computers (both towers and lap-tops) have had hard-drive problems or complete failures...crapy refurbished parts and bad service....my hard drive failed only a month after my three year warrenty was up (with no warning signs) and I was lucky to slave my files off the hard-drive....I will never buy a Dell again...that being said, I don't think that it was your fault, after talking with a bunch of other computer "experts" it is a common thing for a pc to fail anytime after 3 years, due to the poor quality of the parts used in making the damn thing.....I would suggest buying a Mac next time....they seem to last longer!
 
Iggy,

I've run across this a few times, thanks to smoking, running the computer 24/7 and three cats in the house (though we never see a mouse). The heat sink gets filled with dust and it cannot dissipate er, heat, the way it is suppose. I take it out, use a nail, toothpick, whatever is handy to clean it out. Add the heatsink grease to the bottom of it before putting it back into the computer and it is good to go for another 15 months or so.

It's not a snap (usually) to remove the processor and heat sink but it's not brain surgery either.

Mike
 
wordwiz said:
Iggy,

I've run across this a few times, thanks to smoking, running the computer 24/7 and three cats in the house (though we never see a mouse). The heat sink gets filled with dust and it cannot dissipate er, heat, the way it is suppose. I take it out, use a nail, toothpick, whatever is handy to clean it out. Add the heatsink grease to the bottom of it before putting it back into the computer and it is good to go for another 15 months or so.

It's not a snap (usually) to remove the processor and heat sink but it's not brain surgery either.

Mike
Click to expand...


if you unscrew the fan from the top, you can rinse the heatsink out under warm water. Let it air dry & replace.
 
Daisy7117 said:
Was it a Dell computer????
Click to expand...
It is a HP.
Daisy7117 said:
I would suggest buying a Mac next time....they seem to last longer!
Click to expand...
I had a Mac back in LA that when it finally gave out was 10 years old!

wordwiz said:
Iggy,

I've run across this a few times, thanks to smoking, running the computer 24/7 and three cats in the house (though we never see a mouse). The heat sink gets filled with dust and it cannot dissipate er, heat, the way it is suppose. I take it out, use a nail, toothpick, whatever is handy to clean it out. Add the heatsink grease to the bottom of it before putting it back into the computer and it is good to go for another 15 months or so.

It's not a snap (usually) to remove the processor and heat sink but it's not brain surgery either.

Mike
Click to expand...

Good advice.
 
Ok, I blew the computer out this morning. It looked like an old wizard's place, dust everywhere. I just completed the check disk. Now, I'm going to download Omri's suggestions.
 
Hey Omri! For Memtest, do I download the pre-build bootable ISO? Also, how do I find what brand of hard drive I have so I can download the correct test software?
 
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