Computer Problem

[nofishfisherman]

Hey Guys,

I read so advice you ahve given to others with computer problems hopefully you can give me some ideas.

The computer in question is my parents computer. Its an E Machine and is about 3 years old. The problem is that the computer turned off a few days ago and now when you try to turn in back on it will try to start up and will try to boot up 2-3 times and then just shut back off. From the sounds of it it never totally boots up. They said you can hear the computer running and working on booting up but then it just shuts off.

Any ideas what this could be? Power Supply problem? Hard drive dump out? Any thing else?

Not an expert here, I would say I am somewhere around moron when it comes to computers. Any ideas would be great. They will probably end up taking it in and getting it fixed but any info you could provide would be nice.

Also if a harddrive needs to be replaced by a compter tech is there any real danger in that person taking your old hard drive and accessing sensitive info that was stored on it?

[blakjack23]

That really could be a number of problems. Power supply, Hard drive like you mentioned, but it also could be a motherboard, software or memory issue. At 3 years old its almost not worth it to get it fixed if you are going to pay $100-200. You can get a pretty nice PC these days for $300-500.

I would start by looking to see if all the fans are starting up when you turn it on. Also, does anything appear on the screen during the few seconds it is on? If it gets to the windows splash screen and stops then its probably a software of hard drive issue. I would also open it up and reseat all the cables and memory, that actually fixes a number of problems.

[Slyster]

If it's 3 years old and hasn't been kept in tip top shape (speaking of spyware, viruses, hard drive management etc) I would say to backup everything of importance (documents, pix, music etc) and wipe the HD are set back to the factory 'new' setup using the CD's that would have come with it.

Good to do that yearly anyway. That's a gaurenteed fix (or at least will tell you for sure if the computer is dead or not)

[Surface Tension]

Could be a number of things.

Go into bios setup and make sure you have the (harddrive) HDD selected in Boot Devices. To get to bios setup turn you puter on then continue to press the delete key till the bios features page appears. You'll see the legend on how to navigate though the bios but usually you use the arrow keys or page up and down. If you find the HDD wasn't listed in the boot sequence then select it and exit saving changes.

An explanation as to how the bios features could have changed. Your motherboard has a battery that could have went dead or weak, when that happens you can loose bios settings. The first sign of a weak battery is the time displayed in your task bar will start to be slow. To replace that battery unplug the power cord from the back of the case. Depending on what case you have you'll have to remove screws from the back of the case. You'll want to remove the left side panel(left side as your looking at the case from the fount). Be careful in there, you don't want to bang or scratch components. Pretend you playing the game Operation.

You'll see what appears to be a watch battery the size of a nickel on the motherboard. Theres a little tang you have to move to pop the battery out. Go to any large chain discount store and ask for that battery, its a common battery btw. Anyway try the Bios settings and report back.

[Surface Tension]

I should add that the suggestion of checking the bios and HDD selection was because its sounds like the puter powers up and recycles after not finding a boot device.

Something else you can do thats easy and will confirm something up with the HDD or its lack of not being selected in the bios is to power up with his E machine boot/recovery/windows disc. Aaron email me with your number and a good time to call and I'll walk you though the bios setup.

[LaZyDayZ]

Do you get any error beeps?

I agree with making sure fans are turning.

This could very well be an over heating issue.

You would be amazed how much filth is inside your PC blocking the fans and such.

Get a can of compressed air at wallmart.

Take your pc outside and take the side cover off.

Spray the inside of your pc to remove all the dust. Unplug and plug back in everything you can.

Power back up with side cover off. Look for any fans that dont spin.

If you can see that your PC is loading windows prior to the crash a format and reinstall would be a good idea. Your PC should have come with a Master Restore Disc if so just put it in and start the PC. It should walk you through the process. *Caution* Doing this will erase everything you have added to your PC and put it back to the state it was the day you bought it.

Other posibilities are like stated Hardrive or Memory.

It could also be power supply.

Good luck..

[nofishfisherman]

Can you get to that bios thing even though the computer never boots up? It shuts off before it gets to that point. I haven't seen the computer for myself but will this weekend.

I don't think it ever gets to the point where anything shows up on the monitor.

Some good stuff to try though I will see what I can see this weekend and try to get more info from my parents.

I will let you all know who had the winning diagnosis.

[LaZyDayZ]

Surface tension has a good point about bios.

But I think with the PC just shutting off it is heat,power or memory.

Usually a bios error just repoorts an error and asks you to press F1 or delete to enter the bios to fix not shut down PC.

If you do go into your bios there should be an option to set it back to factory defaults or just defaults, seting it to that would be your best option. Be very careful in there!!

[Valv]

I bet you have a bad hard drive. It has some bad sectors on some of Windows system files and reboots immediately while trying to start system.

Check if you have some blue screen flashing sometimes right before it reboots.

I had some systems I tipped on the side and they came back alive, at least enough to move all important docs into a folder and copy it somewhere else (through network).

[nofishfisherman]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I will be over at my parents place on Sunday and I will give some of this a try. None of these suggestions seem very difficult to manage. I guess they talked to someone at Curcuit City and they said it sounded like a mother board or hard drive issue, but they maybe wanting to sell them a new computer instead of giving the help they need.

Frank, I will give everything a shot this weekend and will email you if I run into problems, thanks for all the help as always. You must be some sort of Renaissance Man or something, always good knowledge on every topic.

[nofishfisherman]

Ok here's the update.

I checked out the computer on Sunday afternoon and what I found is this.

When you hit the power but on the front of the computer you can hear the computer running, sounds maily like the fan which I can feel running. When you look at the monitor it says "No Signal" and then goes into standby mode. The CD Rom drives won't open, and when you go to turn the computer off you can't just hold down the power button the only way to turn the computer off is pulling the plug. My parents said it had been hard to shut off lately and that they had been pulling the plug to shut it off. Also they said it had been getting harder to turn on, it wouldn't always turn on when they pushed the power button.

I tried to get into the Bios but with the monitor getting no signal it wasn't working.

With this new information does anyone have any more guesses to what may be wrong? Power Supply? Mother Board? Etc???

[upnorth]

Make sure that the video cable is plugged in. That and if it is re-seat it.

Quote:

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When you hit the power but on the front of the computer you can hear the computer running, sounds maily like the fan which I can feel running. When you look at the monitor it says "No Signal" and then goes into standby mode.

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From the sounds of things the PC is running, but you aren't getting a signal from the PC to the monitor. Could be a bad video card, or there may be someting wrong with the monitor, but that would be remote. If you can try plugging a different monitor to the PC in question. You could always try a cheap video card too.

[Surface Tension]

Yea first thing check to see if the monitor is plunged into the video plug. Next is to determine is you have a video card of on-board(integrated into the mother board)video. One look at the back of the puter will tell you. You'll see the slots and knockouts for adding hardware. If the monitors plug goes to a card in one of those slots your still in business. Remove the power cord and the remove the side cover. Once there remove the tang screw from the video card and remove the card and re-insert it back into the pci or agp slot.

Connect the power cord and turn it on. If you still get " no signal" and have a PCI card move the video card to a different pci slot, if you have an AGP card you won't be able to move it and you next step is to try a different card or test the card in a different puter.

[nofishfisherman]

Would a video card make the computer hard to turn on and impossible to turn off without unplugging it? I was thinking it would have been something to do with the power supply if its hard to turn on. It sounds like the fan gets power but the rest of the computer doesn't. The CD drives won't even open up to get CD's out of them.

My parents called a tech guy yesterday and he pick up the computer after checking out what it was doing. His initial thoughts were that it was either a power supply issue or a fan issue.

If it were a video card thing I would assume that it wouldn't affect the ability to turn the computer off and that the CD drives would still be able to open.

[upnorth]

The PCs of late run the power control through the mother board, so if you are having problems turning the PC it may the the motherboard is bad. Or the power switch may be bad, they do go too.

[nofishfisherman]

Ok the final answer is in.

I got an email from my parents and the tech said he originally thought it was power supply since he couldn't see anything wrong with the motherboard. However after a new pwer supply didn't do the trick he looked again and say a fried circuit on the mother board. So it looks like a new computer is in order. The tech did some research and the model of computer in question has history with frying motherboards. People may want to stay away from E Machines in the future. I am hearing more and more negative things about them.

[upnorth]

There is no doubt they are an econo PC. You don't sell them that cheap without cutting a corner or 2.

[nofishfisherman]

They do meet the needs of alot of people though. If all you do is microsoft office applications and a little web surfing there is no need for a $1500-2000 computer.

For me I do alot of Graphic Design from my home and I needed something a little beefier so I went with a Sony Viao and I love it. Was a little pricey but it does a great job.