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One PC dead

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 12:00
by Zenosis
Ok like I said in the shoutbox, we had power cut this morning caused by the toaster blowing the main ring main circuit.

Well this led to what I assume tobe something on my PC motherboard to fry, this initially meant the fans were running at full speed, after about 10 mins the PC shut itself down, because the motherboad had readings saying it was overheating, one I tried to reboot I got a BIOS error message saying that the previous overclocking attempt failed. I have never overcrlocked the PC so it means the default settings failed. So told it to continue booting, but before it finished booting, it shutdown again, left it for 20 mins then tried booting again, same error message, plus a new one "no operating system found". Ofcourse now I have a little light on the case flashing red, amber, off meaning hardware failure. Not sure when I will get it fixed or replaced, will keep you posted from my tablet.

Sorry if any typos not easy to type with this :)

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 12:14
by Lisszia
It is not your month Zen so it seems... Good luck with fixing the PC and hope to have you back soon.

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 12:49
by Kaetha
incase it's flipped some settings in the bios you could try removing the motherboard battery for about 20 seconds and letting it hard reset to factory defaults. Give it a good hoover and double check the capacitors on the board Zen, if any of the caps are bulging then thats an obvious sign some have blown.

Give it a good sniff, yes I know weird but makes sense, if the board smells of melted plastic/metal then you have another indicator of burned out components. Any brown or black smudging on the board?

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 14:32
by Raiah
Well that sucks. You sure seem to have run in to one heck of a streak of bad luck.

Do what Keatha said, remove the battery to let it reset, if that fails have a look and sniff around the board, it might actually be overheating, broken motherboard components can get real hot real fast.

That no operating system found message is worrying, your hard drive might have been fried too. Could just be BIOS settings messed up making it look for the OS in the wrong place but still...

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 17:42
by Zenosis
Well due to the staffing situation in work, it looks like it could be as long as two weeks before, I will get enough time to have a look properly but I will do the sniff test, and do the battery thing, another thing that worries before the last shutdown it said there was a1.6Ghz processor installed, I was sure it was a 2.8Ghz, so it could be the bios confusing itself.

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 19:11
by Raiah
Removed those extra posts for you.

On the CPU, well, the motherboard can control the CPU, if the temperature goes up or there isn't enough power it could clock it down. Sounds fairly bad for your motherboard.

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 19:59
by Zenosis
Thank you Leo, in work at the moment, luckily windows backed up on Sunday morning, so if major repair, at least Windows will be upto date, will have to look for the invoice and see if it is still under warranty.

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 00:54
by Zenosis
Well tried all the above, the BIOS still insists that it got a 1.6Ghz processor installed when it actually has a 3.2Ghz processor, everything else registers correctly, except still no operating system detected, and the fans running at full pelt, so my diagnosis is that there is something wrong With the processor and hard drives. Case hovered out no burns or scorching on the motherboard, something is telling the fan controller that the system is running very hot.

Will call Dell tomorrow although the system is no longer under warranty at 1 year 10 months old :(

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 01:05
by Zenosis
Ok update, decided to run the windows repair CD that came with the PC, now at restart the BIOS recognises the CPU is 3.2Ghz, but I only seem to have one Hard drive of 512GB instead of 2 512GB raid linked to show as a single 1TB drive, letting the repair disc do its thing.

Oh and the fans are behaving properly.

Re: One PC dead

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 05:52
by SethAltair
That's good news ^^