PC Troubleshooting Guide

When a Bad-Ass Fan Ain’t Enough

For your CPU that is, for however high-tech or expensive a CPU cooling fan is dust kills all that dough you put into buying it. That’s a simple truth many forget to remember and they end up with burnt up CPU’s, literally. CPU’s tend to operate at a high temperature and can handle a maximum of around the boiling point of water or 100 Degrees Centigrade. More than that and components start to fry and eventually fail.

Though you wouldn’t see burnt CPU’s everyday, a component running hotter than usual can lead to mysterious pc crashes and problems such as intermittent errors that you could not diagnose. Take a peek inside of your casing and check from time to time to ensure you have a clean fan and cooling fins. Blow using dusters to clean them out(after you open the case and take it outside of course), refraining from using brushes that everybody uses for it can cause static damage.

Cleaning External Connectors

These are the ports such as the USB, Video and others that usually hide at the back of your CPU unit. They do need attention from time to time and non-chlorinated contact cleaners will do the cleaning for you with little effort. Be sure to power down and unplug everything form the CPU unit. Leave the CPU unplugged for a few minutes and touch the casing to dissipate static electricity that can damage components.

Remember to purchase products that are designed for cleaning sensitive equipment (the term sensitive usually indicates expensive), but the effort and investment will surely be worth the effort. Apply the cleaner in bursts at the ports and allow to dry( which depends on the product so read the labels) and re-assemble your computer.

This cleaning process will solve intermittent USB connection and other problems that defy diagnosis so life becomes a little easier and computer usage more enjoyable, till the next crash.

Shocker!!

Ever gotten a painful jolt form your computer? Many have and they will tell you it hurts, really. Then a common cause may be an improperly grounded computer system or a failed grounding wire on your house’s electrical panel. One more cause is the nasty habit of people(techies) to take out the third prong of the power chord(the round one) that should ground the pc but may be non-existent in some homes.
You could get a power supply(or AVR/UPS) that can provide you with ground so you do not get shocked. One more cause of this problem may be a pending failure of one of your computer’s components even if you do have proper grounding at the plug.

UPS Trouble

A malfunctioning UPS can fail when needed or simply irritate you with constant beeping, a way for the built in electronics to tell you that something’s wrong. Many would take the unit in for repair but some daring (another word for advanced knowledge in electronics and the dangers of electricity) people can refurbish a defective UPS at a fraction of the cost. How could this be, well one of the most common area of concern is the battery/ies that stores electricity for use during unstable power or lack of it. The most common type used are sealed lead acid types that are still the cheapest ones around.
Remember, the innards of the UPS contains high-voltage current that can kill if you do not know what you are doing! Locate the battery packs and remove the positive and negative terminal connectors. Note down the model and type and get yourself replacements. Re-install and re-assemble the unit, ensuring polarities are correct and that you charge the unit prior to connecting your computer to it.
I cannot reiterate the danger so do be careful and if you do not know a thing or two of what you are about to do, DON”T RISK IT.

Fire Up that Firewall (Windows Vista – Part 2)

“Microsoft and the Windows team have done something a little different with the Vista firewall. They have separated the firewall in to two different interfaces. The default interface is the basic one. At first glance, it looks identical to the Windows XP SP2 firewall. This basic interface is ON by default and loads basic settings for normal user protection. In most cases, this basic setting should work fine. Then they added an Advanced interface for the more security savvy individuals. This Advanced interface gives a greater flexibility over the firewalls settings.”

Don’t get too discouraged by rumors, read the facts first and you might just find out how untrue what they are saying about Windows Vista Firewall. You are going to find it useful after all.

Fire Up that Firewall (Windows Vista – Part 1)

Windows Vista owners have often said that the Windows Vista Firewall….. is a dud. Yes, they say that Windows Vista firewall is usless. It may be just the Vista users having tantrums or it may true, nevertheless, this can have a tremendous effect on Window’s credibility on future products so here are the facts from http://www.toejumper.net/
“No third party software can lay claim to the fact that the Windows Firewall starts its protection once the computer is turned on. Is that important you ask? Absolutely. If a capable malware program could turn itself on at the same time that the computer starts to boot, common sense would dictate the danger of this. Now, knowing the fact that the Vista firewall ‘does’ start at boot, we need to confidently know that it is going to protect from boot.”

Hard Drive not Found

This is a very serious situation for it may be an indicator that the hard drive has crashed and without properly scheduled back-up, you may have just lost all your data. This normally sends you into fits of rage but without a proper back-up strategy to keep you safe from such incidents, you will feel utmost loss due to all the spreadsheets, documents, music files and other data that may have been stored on your hard drive. One of the easiest ways to back-up information is to use the facility provided in your Windows setup that saves files onto other media such as tape drives or optical drives. Read the rest…

Hot Computer – System Shutdown

This may have resulted from the computer’s self-monitoring hardware and software, detecting an abnormally high-temperature situation that can damage the system resulting in a system’s shutdown. It may also be time to get the innards of your computer dusted out for too much dust reduces the efficiency of fans and heat sinks, dust being a very good insulator. The cooling system of the computer normally requires ample heat sinks to properly dissipate heat, clogged with dust, it can result in an over-temperature situation which modern motherboards are designed to protect itself from. Read the rest…

CD/DVD Drive Ate your Disk?

Many have experienced the situation, an optical drive that eats your media unwilling to spit it out. may it be an important document archive you need for work of your expensive operating system installer, you have to get it out, how? Most techies know that these optical drives come with a mechanical fail safe to allow ejection of the drive should the tray become stuck inside or a mechanical belt become broken (older drives). The motor on the ejection tray can also get stuck due to a paperclip or sheet of paper your toddler stuck in the drive when you weren’t looking. Read the rest…

System Won’t ShutDown

This may be an indicator that a hidden application may have hung up, preventing the shutdown code from executing. This can result in a non-shutdown scenario so press, CTRL-ALT-DEL to get at the task manager to see which erring application has stopped responding so you could shut it down manually. Should you fail to find it or the system may have stopped responding all together, you may have to do a reboot through the reset button on your front panel but allow the system to restart and complete the diagnostic phase. After the system has restored proper boot-up, then you can shut down and leave it be. If the condition recurs, then something else may be wrong, say a hard drive that is about to fail or a weak BIOS battery may be resetting the bios settings while you are using it so get it checked to be sure. Read the rest…