Crazy computer

[MagicKingdom05]

I thought my computer finally went out on me yesterday, so I head off to Best Buy to see what they had and found two I liked, but decided to sleep on it. I knew that this day was coming because for the last 6-8 months it has gotten worse and worse. So when I got up today I figured that when I turned it on, it was going to grind and make all the loud noices and freeze up like it did yesterday.

To my surprise, all the sudden it's working like a brand new computer, actually better and faster than it has been in almost 6-8 months, but I didn't do anything to it.

Part of me wishes this thing would finally crash, so I could go get a new one, but the other part of me hopes it last another year or so.

 

[mmexpress]

Sounds to me like the cpu fan may be going bad and overheating the processor.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

mmexpress,

That doesn't sound like a good thing. I just realized that the DVD drive isn't working anymore either, so I wonder if that shorted out as well. I wonder if this is just a short term thing and it's on the last leg, because it seems to be running great now other than the DVD drive, but I tried to load a music CD and it copied all the songs, so thats working. All my photo's and stuff like that are saved on photobucket.com so If it does finally go bye bye I won't lose that.

 

[chell]

Look at it this way if it does die soon at least you have been looking and know exactly what you want. If it takes longer that just means you have more time to decide.

Do you have any interest in making your own?

 

[MagicKingdom05]

chell,

I know enough about computers to beable to upgrade memory, put in a better video card, etc, but that's about it so I leave that up to Gateway, HP, etc. There are a couple I really liked:

1. Gateway

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...CategoryId=pcmcat60700050019&id=1134700897082

2. HP

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...CategoryId=pcmcat60700050019&id=1134697737705

Now the Gateway package is $1850 and comes with an ok printer and a nice 19 inch LCD monitor. The HP is about $1750 - $200 in mail-in rebates has a 17 in monitor and a really nice all in one printer.

What I like about both of these is the large hard drive and the fact that they are media centers that would allow me to tape tv shows on them and pause live shows like a DVR does.

 

[chell]

Are you interested in Wireless Networking?

How important is being able to expand to you?

 

[MagicKingdom05]

Wireless networking really isn't that important, but being able to upgrade it as time goes by is.

 

[chell]

In that case #1 gets my vote then. I know you weren't looking for my vote but I thought it might help a little.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

chell,

No that's really helpful. Can you tell me why you would take the gateway over the HP.

 

[chell]

Jason,

I would choose the Gateway because it has more room for expansion than the HP does since you are interested in expansion down the road. There are only a few small differences between the two of the computers though.

Also, the Gateway has a serial port - if that is something you would be using while the HP doesn't.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

chell,

Thanks for your feed back.

If I get the gateway, the only think I would really need to upgrade is a better video card. Lets just see how long my current one lasts, but atleast I know what I'm looking for.

 

[Sparx]

over heated maybe? how many fans do you have in it?

The pc that I am on gets a heavy work out with some stuff that we do. and it has an extra fan to keep everything running smoothly.

Have you recently installed anythign new? we totally lost one computer when we misinstalled some hardwear.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

Sparx,

One fan and I haven't updated anything inside it since after I brought it home and added some memory and a better video card 3 yrs ago. It was a cheap computer that I got at microcenter that really doesn't have a lot of the stuff the new ones do.

For the last 6-8 months some days are better than others and like I said I thought it was down for the count yesterday, so that's why I'm surprised its actually running now. However I have noticed that the fan is more loud than it was before.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

I wish that either this thing was going to hold on and make it for another year or so or just give up so I can set a new one up this weekend. I've know for a while the my old crt monitor is going because it tends to overheat here and there and the picture is starting to go.

 

[mmexpress]

There should be a fan on the cpu and one in the power supply.
The cpu fan is not difficult to replace and the part is not expensive.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

Ok. It looks like it's time to scrap this one and get another one. I decided to check my defrag to see how that looked and I should have about 85 gigs left of hard drive space of the 120 I started with. It now tells me that I have 10 gigs left, so it looks like maybe the hard drive might be damaged and maybe that's why I'm having these problems.

Is it possible that my computer overheated and that somehow damaged my hard drive. That would explain why some of the songs I put on my computer resently never seem to stay. Also when I click on a few games I have on here it says there on the computer, but when I click on it, I get an error message saying something about not being found.

 

[chell]

Yes, the hard drive could be damaged if it has over heated.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

So far I have figured out that the DVD drive, the CDRW drive and part of the hard drive don't work, plus who knows about the rest. It would then seem that the only thing this is good for is suffing the net, which isn't why I bought a computer.

It does surf the net and prints, but that's about it.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

This would explain why the surfing the web is going faster, because nothing else is working so it's not taking up the rest of the resources that it was.

 

[chell]

Does this mean you are going shopping tomorrow?