My computers keep dying. Is it me?

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Are you wearing any jewlery as it could be magnetic?

Hello,

I have the same problem...well, my girlfriend does
everytime she is on my computer the machine keeps crashing sometimes even refuse to switch on on a cold start, then if i'm sitting at it, the machine reacts normally.
My pc is working with me very well, is a dual core machine with all the update but with my girfriend is acting strange....

Ciao.

Try an experiment - buy a cheap copper bracelet, wear it when you use the laptop on battery only, make sure you leave mains lead to laptop unplugged. If after six months you have no repetition of failures, switch to leaving it off. If copper bracelet makes no difference, my bet would be on environment as per Leo. If it does make a difference AND the problems recur when you stop using the bracelet, decide whether it is cheaper to keep wearing it or pay out for more investigations. But you will have something to talk about either way!
Good luck

UPS's aren't really that pricey anymore. A decent one sufficient to protect a typical desktop PC (sans monitor, especially if it's a CRT) run under $100 USD.

No matter how reliable or unreliable your power is, it just doesn't make sense to not use a UPS on all your computer equipment.

I once had a friend who had similar problems, with tv's however. She ended up buying 4 or 5 tv's just because some days she couldnt turn them on, when her daughter tried they worked fine. kind of makes you think, eh?

>Are you wearing any jewlery as it could be magnetic?

Extremely unlikely to be the problem. Magnetism falls off with the inverse cube of distance; a small piece of magnetic jewelery isn't going to do anything unless you take apart the hard drive and rub it all over the platters.

Think about it: the degauss coil in a CRT monitor is way more powerful than any magnetic jewelery (mostly cos it's alternating rather than static), and it doesn't have any significant effect on a computer either. (Although it could cause problems with floppy disks left on top of it; floppies have a much lower coercivity than hard discs).

I'd hate to see anyone spend money on an electrician just to check their power when you can do it yourself.

Go to the hardware store and buy one of those little yellow plug devices with three lights on the end. Plug it into any outlet and it will show you if the outlet is properly grounded and properly wired.

If you have the old ungrounded two-hole outlets, get some "ground-lifters" -- those little grey plugs that adapt a two-pronged outlet so a three-pronged plug can connect to it. Then take the little wire attached to the ground-lifter, back off one of the receptacle's screws and attach the wire so it makes a good connection with the screw. The screw attaches directly to the metal casing of the receptacle, which in turn is grounded to your electrical system. Finally, test your power coming out of the ground-lifter with your yellow plug-tester and make sure you have a good ground.

It's not rocket science.

That's all good advice. What *is* (sort of) rocket science is making sure your power is "clean" (right voltage, steady, etc.) - and what to do if the box you just connected the green wire to is, itself, not grounded.

I would have blamed microsoft for everything, cursed bill gates to hell and installed a nix. But thats just me :)

My thanks to Leo and everyone who posted a comment in reference to my computers crashing dilema. I am getting a UPS for all of my computers ASAP!

On a final note, after writing to Leo, one of my computer monitors just stopped displaying! It is new, and the higher end video/graphics card I installed is approx. 6 months new! Hopefully the UPS will prevent further issues...unless I throw the computers out the window first. :) Thanks again Leo, I appreciate the advice very much.

Beth

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