Computer dying!

I've posted on this before but couldn't find the thread sorry so will start from scratch again.

Some weird noises (clicking and such) come from the tower then things freeze. I think i used the description of "like a car trying to turn over but can't hold it" before, and that's about right I guess.

Several fast clicks then the general "humm" of the tower stops, then sounds like it tries to fire up again and MOre clicking, then gives up again. Does this a few times then freezes and either restarts itself or I have to flick the power.

The obvious options would be PSU, Fan, or HDD.

If it was the Fan i'd have thought it would have fried the processor by now.

However, the (second) last time it happened, I had a blue screen error and when tried restarting it asked for me to insert boot diskette in drive a:

I've not got a boot disk for XP though.

After an hour or so (and about 10 attempts) it managed to start (i held F8 - which is meant for safe MOde yea?) and seemed ok (so not sure if F8 made any differece or was jus coincidence, as seemed to be workin normaly).

Seems XP (pro) doesn't allow you to just make a boot disk from the start menu like with previous versions Managed to get the file from the MS site but it's 4MB. That's not going to fit on a floppy, and as I said, it's asking for the a: when askin for the boot disk, so burning to a cdr wont work.

I know it seems like i'll be needing to replace the HDD sooner than planned, but I guess a boot disk would be useful in the mean time, just not sure how to split it over multiple floppys.

Any advice on any of this and what to do next (i'm not really clued up on this stuff so be gentle) greatly apreciated.

It's done the clicking thing and froze since and managed to statr straight up first time after (without asking for boot disk).

Thanks for any help as always

MO

p.s where's good place for a new HDD? Only a lowly PIII 450MHz but wuld want a decent sized one.

 

MO
sounds like HDD to me.
it could be locking/freezing. The clicking sounds like heads seeking and not finding.
Can you borrow a disc to try?

 

Right, the reson the XP boot disk files is 4mb is because you have the instaltion bootdisks which go on 4 floppies.

to actaully boot up you can use any boot disk it doesnt need to be a XP one.

although it does seem like your harddrive is very close to the edje and i would recomend a new one before that dies so you can copy any files over.

 

This might be a daft suggestion but I had a similar problem once. Turned out a lead was stopping the fan causing things to overheat leading to the problem. Once the lead was moved the problem went.

Bob

 

A few weeks a go my kit would stop for no reason and every now and then it either would not boot or get half way through before the screen going black (no BSOD?). I could hear the beep of the boot and the click as the heads shot towards the boot sector and then as often as not just a big nothing.

A virus in the ROM or Bios? a broken hard disk? a nasty virus from a very nasty site? I knew it couldn't be the fan because I could hear it working all through out the aborted bootings and it was working when the machine stopped for no reason in the middle of doing something. This went on for a while until one evening when things were cooling down I tried my luck an just caught the mearest glimps of "CPU FAN NOT WORKING" flash up on the screen before things turned to black. Don't laugh but I could hear the main case fan and not the little one atop of the heatsink.

So off to the local friendly PC builders / repairers for a 70mm fan and came away with a boxed heatsink & fan package (£9.50) for my AMD cpu plus a talk through of what to do and what to do with the thermic paste. After a lot of fiddling about I managed to install the new heatsink and fan and then gave in insides of te system box a good clean and now it is working just as new. The XP system offered me a good set of system files to restore from and after much sweating I was once more back in business.

Anyway have a look at the CPU fan if you have one as it might be your problem.

Auric

 

thanks for the replies.

It wouldn't work at all today when I tried it (about 10+ times over several hours - and had been off for a good few hours before trying) before work, then I tried it a couple of times again when I got home.

It powered up, made a beep, the packard bell screen shot appeared, no sign of "welcome to XP" or any of that. Could hear the clicking noise a few times, and then the noise from the tower dropping. And asking for a boot diskette to be inserted into drive a: again.

I thought best open it and see if I can detect where the noise was coming from (and confirm it's the HDD not a fan).Unplugged it all and picked out some obvious clumps of dust on vent holes, the fan on the PSU, and a little from the fans on the board. There's two pretty small fans (I assume) a few cm across each. One on the processor and the other on the MOther board. And then fired it up.

A screen appeared saying something about different start options available (previous settings, normal, and safe I think) due to a recent error. Before I managed to read it and pick an option it started to go ahead on it's own (so I assume normal MOde) and after another screen I've not seen before where windows was scanning one of my drives and repairing a few things (I assume it was refering to the HDD), it loaded as normal. It wasn't standard scan disk, Was a screen similar to those when instaling windows.

And...... erm......... it seems to be working ok now. I've not tried turning it off as I'm going to back everything up (hopefuly) before trying to restart. But seems ok now after about half an hour or so being on. One other thing, it's now upside down (easier to get some of the screws and just left it this way), so if it was a wire on a fan or something like mentioned above, perhaps being upside down has sorted that out

Perhaps the dust on CPU fan was doing the same as the wire blocking? There was (and still is), a fair bit in there. There was only a very light aMOunt on the chip and board fans.

The Harddrive in here is only about 8GB so a new one will be required no matter what I guess. Any suggestions of where to look? and what to look for?

Also, how do I put the bootfile onto floppy? I've downloaded it but don't know how to spread a file over multiple floppy's. Thought it would just advise it was to big then tell me to insert another floppy when the first one was full and so on. But it just said it was too big and I'd need MOre space on the floppy (which was blank).

Thanks again fo the help.......

I may post again on here later......... if it's sucessful on the restart.

 

not sure if the cd writer will work upside down

 

Well, it's managed to work on first attempt today!

I know dust can be bad, but there wasn't HUGE aMOunts in there, just the aMOunt you'd expect after 4 years or so. But that seems to have sorted it!

Just needed a li'l spring cleaning!

Would still like to know how to go about putting a file onto multiple floppy's if anyone's able tohelp out there?

Cheers (a slightly confused and relieved MO)

 

There are people who still use floppies?

(sorry, that wasn't very helpful was it )

Miochael.

 

it was asking for a boot disk to be inserted in a:

A cd wouldn't fit into the a drive