If you experience frequent CPU failures and get feedback from the store that the power supply has blown. Try to get a larger capacity or higher rated power supply. You might have too many devices hooked up to the power supply (internal and externally) both of which take power from the same power supply if they have no individual power adapter. Say if you have a 300 or 400 watt power supply, try getting hold of a 500 watt or higher model and try to get the bit pricy one so it would last. Repetitive power supply failures can cause damage to the internal parts of your CPU and even the board itself which has built in fuses to protect the Microprocessor unit itself from such damage. If the board has also failed, you would have to get another board to transfer the cpu onto.

If your PC boot�s up but doesn�t load windows, then it might have been shut down without using the shutdown facility provided. To fix it, simply press F7 and select safe mode from the command line menu and follow all in-screen instructions. Some files or system drivers get damaged by such events so have the driver cd�s at hand. Once the check disk facility finishes, you should be able to gain access to your PC normally. If it still won�t load properly, try shutting down and re-starting for there might be some corrupted programs that need to be restored. Try getting the windows installation CD�s and re-install windows to restore all the damaged system files.

First check the power chord and the cable that connects to the CPU. If these are firmly seated and there is still no display, the video card may be defective or the least needs to be re-seated. Pull out all the plugs and wires connected to the CPU and open it. Try to remember the place where the monitor is connected and you get the video card. Remove the said card by unscrewing it from the casing and removing or sliding any retention tabs that was supposed to prevent it from pulling loose. Pull it out while taking care not to remove any of the other wires that are in the CPU unit itself. Check for any visible damage such as burn marks or a smell that I assure you that you won’t soon forget. Any of those signs and get packing for you are getting a new one. If unsure of the type (there are several types of video cards), bring the one you pulled out as a basis. When at the store, try getting something either equal to or better than the one you have. When you get home, touch the CPU power supply to again discharge static and re-install the aid card. Remember to re-attach any cable or fan power supply you might have had to pull out to get access. Re-assemble the unit and boot up(you might have to install the drivers of the new card if you were unable to get the same type and brand).

If you have just re-furbished your computer say replacing parts (memory, video cards, hard drive and other bare essentials) make sure all power connections are properly seated and connected then try to power-up. If that fails, try to un-plug and re-plug all cards and connections (IDE cables, SATA Connectors, power supply connections, etc.)
connections to ensure they seat properly (it would be nice to check for bent pins before you re-plug them in their proper sockets for that sometimes happen) and check for broken pins that may be preventing proper connections. Re-check what you have done by powering up and see if that works.

There are a couple of very easy steps that would allow you to troubleshoot a motherboard that doesn’t power up but be sure to get a grounding wrist strap to dissipate any static electricity that would kill any electronics you may touch. Make sure all power connections are unplugged before servicing a computer to prevent stray electricity from kicking you with a jolt of electricity. As with many PC problems, it would be best to strip down the PC to a bare-bone system, which would be the, Power Supply, Motherboard, processor, memory, hard drive and the necessary CPU fan. Take out all peripherals that may be connected to the computer and un-hook all connected printers and other devices. This would allow you to do an elimination process whereby you get to add components that may be causing the failure to power up.

First, if you can get hold of nifty utilities from trusted sites of the internet, then that would be easier but it can sometimes corrupt the bios of the system as it forces a program to open the said part of your computer system so be cautious and read all recommendations and instructions in the readme file so you don’t cause further problems.
If you’re in a hurry and don’t have a second computer to do a search, you can always consult the motherboard’s manual or simply look at the board for any pins that are labeled BIOS reset/normal. This is a failsafe mechanism which is built in by manufacturers into their boards to allow use of a locked system as yours.

If you by chance got yourself a good deal on a second-hand computer that works just right and is affordable enough o allow you to upgrade some parts then you indeed got a good deal. As you get home, you setup your prize and power-up only to find that the system is locked down by a password. A boot password or worse a system password can prevent access to the contents of the hard drive or the system itself leaving you stranded in the boot-up menu. Don’t fret, for there are ways to get around the problem and these work almost all of the time in getting you up and running in no time at all.

Ever been so overeager to install a new software or a new gadget that you end up having an unstable system? Ever been greeted by the blue-screen of death after a program or driver upgrade? Then first, DO NOT PANIC, for there are some steps you could do to remedy the situation and pulling out all your hair won’t do you any good for sure. If you are using Xp, then system restore would be a good thing to do and should you have a recent back-up or restore point, it would mostly revert the damage you may have inadvertently done to your computer system. But this XP feature has to be enabled first so to be sure you prevent catastrophe in the event of incompatibility issues, then do a restore point before you do anything (the situation presented earlier). Having a device that suddenly fails can be resolved by rolling back the driver for that specific device to restore proper operation. (more…)

Commercial polishing compounds in liquid form can be used to polish off lightly scratched disks but do it only in the affected area to see if it works. Use alcohol to remove the glare caused by the cleaner before sticking it into the drive. If that still doesn’t work, the scratch is so deep that there is no turning back and you’d have to go to a friend’s house or buy another copy for your purposes. Good luck and remember, keep all important disks stored in a safe place where they would be easily accessible for future use. If you need drivers, you could search for the in the manufacturer’s site or in the many driver sites such as driversguide.com and others.

The advent of the Terabyte hard drive has many techies drooling about the endless possibilities in terms of the amount of data they can hold. Though still quite expensive, there are certain situations where such a huge drive would be advantageous such as with use in video and animation which tends to be quite hard drive space hungry. Bigger is better, right? Not always, for consider this, you may have a terabyte of data stored into a compact drive but what would happen to that very terabyte of information should your hard drive suddenly fail? Having several drives is still better due to the redundancy that exists, and is the reason why servers have several hard rives in a RAID configuration that has the ability to either have several hard drives having the same information, ready for hot swapping should the primary hard drive fail without much problems. (more…)