Comments for Hardware Can Break

Comment from Steve Osterday on 2010-04-06

2010-04-06T19:56:37Z

Just recently I was sitting next to a less than 3 year old laptop that was on and had a display on the screen. All of a sudden out of the blue the screen went black and white text on the screen indicated chkdsk was starting to run. Not a good sign! Long story short it still functioned somewhat, but it was clear the hard drive had failed. Fortunatly I had created a set of recovery disks, (no OS disks were included)and I had created backups on an external HD using Acronis TI that was recommended in Leo's news letters. Since the laptop came with VISTA installed and I had upgraded to Win7, I had a lot of work to do to get it back to where it was when it failed. I actually had forgotten the Acronis TI backup or the job would have been even easier. Since I was replacing the HD anyway I increased the size from 160GB to 320GB.
--Steve

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Comment from Steve Osterday on 2010-04-06

2010-04-06T19:43:34Z

Back in the days of the 386 I had a computer that started acting erradically. I think the symptoms were random rebooting. I had a "feeling" about it and in those days the motherboard chips were plugged in, not soldered and not the CPU. Since I never throw away any old computer parts I happen to have had an old motherboard that I had upgraded from that had plugin chips of the kind I needed. I exchanged them and cured my problem.
--Steve

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Comment from Ravi Agrawal on 2010-04-06

2010-04-06T18:35:53Z

Still another way to diagnose (maybe) faulty hardware is to use a live linux CD like Ubuntu and Knoppix. This way you will have ruled out OS sofware completely.

Linux OSs have gone quite far in polishing their User interface. Of course, there is a learning curve but other than that I see hardly any drawbacks with linux OSs.

Windows is pretty and works well most of the time and everyone likes pretty. However linux is more like a beast ready to spring into action when needed otherwise it sits so quietly which may at times make one wonder if the OS has frozen /stalled.

I keep a linux CD handy just to delete nasty virii from launching at times.

Ravi.

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Comment from John Ellerington on 2007-04-19

2007-04-19T11:34:07Z

Recently had a PSU failure - symptoms quite obvious, PC totally dead! Replaced PSU, all seemed fine - except that computer then started to reboot at random. Eventually tracked problem to bad memory chip (replaced foc under 5-year warranty!) - memory problem was probably caused by power 'spike' when PSU died - seems it's quite common for PSU failure to kill other components as well.

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Comment from Terry Hollett on 2007-04-15

2007-04-16T01:50:24Z

My first computer was a 486sx which crapped out on me after only 6 months. Major hardware failure. (it was second hand).

My second computer, 486Dx2. Just shortly after getting it, I thought it was possessed, turned out to be a bad keyboard.

Then I had a second problem. I kept getting a hard drive controller error and my computer would not boot with a CD in the drive. This turned out to be a misplaced jumper on my hard drive, that should of been set to 'master' rather than 'cable select'.

I also almost lost a keyboard when a nephew wasted a glass of juice on my keyboard. I ended up taking all the screws out the back and discovered the plastic circuit 'board' was all gumed up. So I cleaned it with a paper towel and alcohol rub. Worked just fine after that.

On my first Pentium (P166), my motherboard went bad. One of the memory slots stopped working. I was able to confirm it was not the chips.

And yet dispite all of this, I plead guilty of always assuming its a software problem. Maybe because its usually cheaper and easier to replace??

www.geocities.com/terryhollett2003/

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Comment from Charlie Griffith on 2007-04-14

2007-04-14T14:39:26Z

My Logitech brand optical wireless mouse cursor is jumping erratically. I've read internet (and your) comments, but still can't eliminate this. No pattern is apparent. Toshiba Satellite laptop works fine, etc. I've blown on the opening, no dust apparent....what to do?

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Comment from Dave B on 2007-04-09

2007-04-09T15:26:11Z

I can think of one hardware failure that many users began to recognize correctly - the Iomega "click of death". The old ZIP drives would commit suicide and take all of the user's data with them.

Other joys included the RLL drive grind, the Seagate click, and the magic smoke smell.

My favorite recovering was a keyboard incident. Someone accidentally poured a full cup of heavily sugared coffee into an IBM terminal keyboard - one of the super-expensive units with a jillion function keys. It immediately began to "type" crazy text... the user was petrified. I took the keyboard home, popped off all of the keycaps, and soaked it in the bathtub (NOT A RECOMMENDED PROCEDURE!). After giving it a few minutes to soak, I rinsed it off and blew out the water with a hair drier. The next day we plugged it in - success!

Favorite hardware error - the jumping mouse cursor. It just takes a tiny bit of lint, in the sensor hole on the bottom of the mouse, to drive a user crazy. The mouse pointer will jump erratically around the screen. This is fun to fix for co-workers, who think there is something wrong with their Windows installation - flip the mouse over, pull out the offending bit of fuzz, and ta-da!

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Comment from Greg on 2007-04-07

2007-04-08T06:07:06Z

If the Q key stops working, the obvious thing to do is hook up another keyboard. If the Q key works on the other keyboard, then it's not the software.

Sadly, that's obvious to some, but not to others.

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