PC Troubleshooting Guide

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…

Running Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup

When you want to keep your PC running smoothly and fast, regular maintenance is needed. It’s a bit ironic though, that many people overlook two basic tasks that both help your computer speed up is data processing, as well as cleaning up and utilizing hard disk space – Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup.

Both are found in Start > Program Files > Accessories > System Tools. Disk Cleanup usually takes about 15-30 minutes, depending on the files it has to clean up, while Disk Defragmenter takes much longer. Still, it’s recommended that you run both tasks at least once a month, so that your CPU speed will be kept at an optimum, and you maximize your hard disk space by removing any clutter and organizing your files.

Warning Too Hot Too Long – Fryin Board

High end motherboards come with temperature sensors that is set to a specific temperature that warns the user that the processor is overheating, even shutting down the system to prevent heat damage to the processor. The system uses smart fan technology that varies the speed of the fans according to the cooling needs of the computer but in tropical climates, an overclocked system may prove to be too hot to handle so addition of additional fans may be needed to prevent such instances.
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Boosting the booting speed of your Windows XP

Windows XP boot slowing your productivity down? Time to un-slow it then and read the advice from one of the experts below:

According to the experts the best way to go about this is to find the source:

Legitimate programs usually put an icon in the SysTray, next to the clock on the Windows Taskbar. Right-clicking an icon will often let you tell the program not to load. However, Microsoft provides msconfig, a good utility for controlling how Windows starts up. To run it, click Start, select Run, type msconfig in the box and click OK. The Startup tab on the far right lists the programs being loaded, but it’s worth looking through the other tabs. Microsoft has a trouble-shooting guide to using it: search Google for Q310560.

More info here.

Whats Your Windows Version?

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Whenever you upgrade or simply troubleshooting your personal computer, you should always know what version your Windows OS is using. This is important because of so many compatibility issues with drivers and hardwares. You can also cross reference with the support group so you can precisely fix what the problem is without having too much of a hassle. To get the version, you need to turn on your computer and watch out for the Welcome screen. Take note of the version. It may display any of the following, Windows 98, ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Click the Start menu, click Control Panel, then click System. In the General tab, you should be able to find the version of the current operating system. Then write it down a piece of paper so you can refer to it when you fix on some conflicts in the PC.

ビープと鳴ると問題な時

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マザーボードのようにビープというシグナルがなると、グラフィックカードにエラーが起こったことを示す場合があります。 時折、問題に関係するコードがシステムメモリーの場合もあるため、非常に見極めが困難です。長いビープ１つと短いビープ２つはメモリの故障に関係するグラフィックカードの問題を示します。第一にすることはカードをソケットに再挿入し、接続を確認することです。 これはどのハードウェアが不良であるか調べる方法の一つです。リソースの葛藤も一つの要因です。グラフィックカードはちゃんと作動しているのに、他のアプリケーションが同じリソースを使用しようとしているので、システムが機能を許可しないという意味です。リソース葛藤トラブルシューターをクリックして解決方法を発見してください。

Internet disconnection

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While it may be time consuming to open up the CPU of your computer, most of the problems that you encounter with your PC doesn’t require you to open the CPU case. Hardware problems can be taken care of just as easily as it may sound. Like when your connection to the internet is suddenly dropped or lost. You might be tempted to scrap your modem and buy a new one. When all you need is a simple tweak through windows. Sometimes the modem gets overloaded with too much data influx. What you do is, click Start, click Settings, click Control Panel and click Modems. Select Properties dialog box’ General tab. It will highlight your existing modem. click Properties. You’ll see the Maximum Speed drop down list. Click on the next setting lower than your original setting. this will surely affect the the speed of the modem but at least it will keep your connection intact, without dropping.

When Beeps mean Trouble!

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Like the motherboard, there are certain beeps that signals error with the graphics card. It is very hard to determine though, because some of these codes pertain to problems with the system memory. A sound of ONE long beep and TWO short beeps, this would indicate a problem with the graphics card possibly connected with a fault from the memory. First thing to do is check the connections by re inserting the card into the socket. If you have a spare graphics card in hand, try inserting it in the socket. This is one way of checking which of the hardware is defective. Resource conflict can also be a factor. It simply means that your graphics may be working just fine but the system is not allowing it to function because there is another application using the same resource. Find out how to resolve this by clicking on Resource Conflict Troubleshooter.