For some reason it seems we can't breath in our house without building up a static charge. Kalee touched her mouse earlier today and the computet went nuts and shut down. Now we get nothing as video output...when we turn it on it just runs the fan. No hard drive noises or anything...just lights and the fan.
Any suggestions on a course of action?
(yeah we know ESD is bad for computers...it's hard to avoid...I shocked my mouse on my pc just before starting this thread and that was all after having shocked myself on an electrical outlet ground)
No beeps on startup?
always check the dumb things first... did anything get unplugged?
Is the mouse optical? does it light? try turning it on w/o the mouse plugged in... no good? then...
Although not static related, the first thing to try is unplug everything.Including everything in the back.. open the case and unplug and re-plug all the IDE cables, power cables etc (one at a time so you dont loose track of where they go :icon_mrgreen: )... re-seat the memory (pull it out and back in) Then plug everything back in and try again :thumb: Re seating all the plugs/devices is always a good place to start.
If thats no-go, try unplugging the PC and pulling the CMOS battery.. thats the fat round battery on the mainboard... leave it out while holding the power button in on the front for 60 sec. then put the bat back in and try again :thumb:
If all above doesn't work... You may need something replaced...
Start there and post your results :thumb:
I did all the basic stuff...got it sorted, though. Called dell and them "welll Idunnhowho" and they went through a lot of crap with me and decided it's best to replace the motherboard (under warranty) on Thursday. We can live til thursday. In the mean time we're getting a wireless mouse (at least) and a discharge tower so we can ground ourselves before touching the machines.
by the way...dell = 10000000000000x better now that they bailed on all the indian tech support/service guys and brought theose jobs to the States.
Did you check the troubleshooting LED in the back? you can search for a code list for you machine and compare it if they aren't all green :thumb:
Quote from: makenzie71 on February 04, 2008, 06:16:09 PM
by the way...dell = 10000000000000x better now that they bailed on all the indian tech support/service guys and brought theose jobs to the States.
I saw on the News the other day that a lot of Companies were going to bring those jobs back to the US. :thumb:
i would have also checked teh PSU
was the motherboard. they replaced it today. Dell f%$king rocks. Expensive, but you sure get what you're paying for.
i build my own pcs. but agreed dell is one of the best. i also stand behind hp/compaq. reason being is they did what they said they would. WHEN they said they would do it
We looked into HP's when grabbing Kalee's machine and chose against them because HP didn't off any off-the-shelp XP machines and REFUSED to build an XP machine for special order. Dell is the only company I'm aware of at the moment that will modify any current platform to work with XP.
I would have built her PC but I'm not so nifty with windows installation and I wanted stuff like the warranty that says we can call in with a shot motherboard and they'll replace it free of charge. I'd be out $500+ if it weren't for that.
You cant possibly build a comparable PC from scratch and load it with a LEGAL! copy of XP or vista for the prices that Dell offers No way...
I used to build PCs and unless you are going high end you cant compete with Dells prices fro low cost PCs. Today IMO for most users the bottom barrel PC has more than enough power to do anything they could want to do. Computers have become sooo overkill in processing power that advancement has slowed significantly in processing speed.
well really it's never processing power that's an issue....it's video and other support. And I could have built something comparable...with our last PC purchase came a legal copy of XP. It'd simply be moving it from the old, binned PC to the new one. Buying a new copy of that stuff would have been shitty, though.
Quote from: scottpA_GS on February 06, 2008, 07:05:25 PM
You cant possibly build a comparable PC from scratch and load it with a LEGAL! copy of XP or vista for the prices that Dell offers No way...
I used to build PCs and unless you are going high end you cant compete with Dells prices fro low cost PCs. Today IMO for most users the bottom barrel PC has more than enough power to do anything they could want to do. Computers have become sooo overkill in processing power that advancement has slowed significantly in processing speed.
true. ubt the budget pcs from dell, i cant get parts for ahrdly. or no one carries them anymore, potential for upgrades can be sparse etc etc etc not bad machins, but something i cannot use :dunno_white:
I have to agree processors are so advanced and cheap now they far outstrip the other components in the PC they are in, in a set price range. The other components just can't compete with processors these days on a cost/performance basis. You can have a great processor just because its cheap to produce relatively but you can't have a decent graphics card, sound card, enough RAM in the same computer to match the processor performance simply based on cost.
However as Scott says most basic budget pc's offer plenty of power in all aspects for what most users will want. PC's start getting expensive when you want to start playing graphics intensive games. I have a high end PC and still cant play BF2 on high graphics settings all round.