Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bauglir]

So a heavy weight fell directly beside my desktop, and now it won't boot anymore. It had apparently frozen, so I restarted it - since then, the fans will start going and the hard drive will spin, but the screen will remain black (instead of displaying the usual splash screen from the motherboard), it will wait for about a minute, then shut down and start over automatically. I've seen a similar problem before, when one of my SATA cables wasn't fully plugged in, but that doesn't seem to be the case here - I've unplugged everything but the graphics card (necessary for the display) and the RAM from the motherboard, and the problem persists. Removing the RAM makes the computer restart faster. Before I restarted, the computer took keyboard and mouse input until I hit an OK button in a window (which would've loaded something from a file on a flash drive), which is the point at which it froze. Since it was still capable of doing that, I suspect the processor is still fine.

So I'm pretty sure I knocked some piece of hardware loose, but I can't figure out which one (unless I knocked some piece of the motherboard proper loose, in which case I'm well and truly fucked). I'm off to try my RAM sticks one by one in case one of them is busted, but let me know if you have any ideas.

[Arx]

Check the motherboard power connector is still in firmly. My brother's desktop had a similar problem for a while.

[Bauglir]

That did not do the trick. I've unplugged and reattached every connector that's actually being used, for good measure. I was planning on getting some new computer bits soon, so I guess I'll just do a nearly-full rebuild. Probably easier at this point. Might be able to keep the RAM, and I'll definitely be keeping the drives and various external things, but I'll just plan on getting a new motherboard, CPU, and graphics card, since the problem is (probably) in at least one of those and they can't be disentangled with the parts I have on hand.

[Arx]

Sounds like the best plan to me. We never actually fixed the desktop - he just got a much nicer laptop.

[Bauglir]

A quick hard drive transplant reveals that it no longer passes some sort of integrity check Windows does on booting, although this computer actually boots properly. This terrifies me, but backups were able to be made, and there's a fairly recent Restore Point that it seems okay with doing. Hopefully this works out. Thanks for the help anyway.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Didn't the shutdown page say that several users had copies of the DB?
You could try asking around and see if you can find somebody that has it.

It did. I found it. I feel dumb.

-snip-

And now that I did what I should have, and just found the database, I feel like a dick for making go to all that effort for nothing. Thanks a bunch, either way! Sorry about it.

[Lord Shonus]

Lately, my computer's developed the habit of, while I'm doing nothing in particular, cranking up the fan speeds. I check my Speedfan logs, and sure enough, there was a temperature spike. The odd thing is that I cannot find a reason for the temp to spike that way. My RAM usage isn't going up, my CPU usage is steady, no unusual hard drive activity, etc. It isn't a gradual temperature rise followed by a drop after the fans kick in (as would be expected if the cooling was just less efficient that it ought to be), it's a sudden spike from nowhere. Normally, I'd assume something in software was doing it, but with no sign of why the temp's going up, that seems ike a wild goose chase.

[Sappho]

I've finally got enough money to buy a new computer! \o/

...But the one I picked out a few months ago is no longer available. D:

So I need to pick a new one. Any feedback on these will be greatly appreciated!!!

http://www.alza.cz/acer-aspire-tc-605-d2259550.htm
http://www.alza.cz/asus-m70ad-d2266022.htm
http://www.alza.cz/acer-aspire-predator-g3-605-d2265668.htm
http://www.alza.cz/asus-m70ad-d2266023.htm

This link has them all compared side by side, but I don't know if it works universally or if you have to be logged in to my account: http://www.alza.cz/EN/porovnani.htm?c=TC045h4i3o;TA226g2;TC013e4c5i;TA226g4;

EDIT: I've narrowed it down to these two.
http://www.alza.cz/asus-m70ad-d2266022.htm - ASUS M70AD
This one has a slightly better processor, massive hard drive, but apparently a lower-end video card (NVIDIA Geforce GTX 745, 4 GB RAM) and less RAM (8 GB).

http://www.alza.cz/acer-aspire-predator-g3-605-d2265668.htm
This one has a slightly lesser processor, half the hard drive size (but still plenty big enough), but a higher-end video card (NVIDIA Geforce GTX 760, 1.5 GB RAM) and double the system ram (16 GB).

I don't know enough about video cards to know whether the video RAM is important or not. The second one also has "1152 pieces stream processor," whatever that means. I know that having twice the RAM is very good. Overall, I'm guessing the second one is the better choice, but I have no experience with Acer. Good quality?

There's also another version of the first one (the ASUS) with double the RAM, but it's the most expensive option I'm looking at.

Any help/recommendations/info is greatly appreciated! Thanks guys!

[Thief^]

The 2nd one is *much* better. The 760 is more than twice as powerful as the 745 (even despite being the slower OEM version of the 760). 4 GB of graphics ram won't make up for an otherwise poor card.

The "1152 pieces stream processor," is literally how many processing cores are on the GPU. People are normally surprised when they hear this, given that CPUs (as opposed to GPUs) are normally in single-digit number of cores. The 745 for comparison has 384 (although not directly a comparable number, because they are operating at a ~25% faster clock speed).

The cpu may be worse, but it's still plenty good enough. If you can get an SSD to use for your windows drive (a 120 GB one is relatively cheap these days and is plenty for windows, but you'll likely need to relocate games to another drive if you want to install more than a couple), you'll see a huge improvement to startup time and general responsiveness as well. I'd recommend the Samsung 840 (link) series, but any ssd is an amazing improvement over an old-fashioned spinning disk.

[Sappho]

Thanks for that info, Thief. It looks like I'm going with this one: http://www.alza.cz/acer-aspire-predator-g3-605-d2265668.htm

I've got one more concern, though. I'm buying this computer in the Czech Republic, but I need the OS to be in English. Anyone have any experience with buying computers internationally? Can I choose the OS language when I first start it up? Or will I have to go there in person and specifically order an English operating system? My Czech is pretty good, but I do not want my computer to be in Czech. When I'm fighting with system settings is not the time to be learning more Czech.

[Rose]

THe biggest issue to look out for is the keyboard. if it has a czech keyboard, then that is slightly difficult to deal with. Everything else is changable.

[aenri]

Thanks for that info, Thief. It looks like I'm going with this one: http://www.alza.cz/acer-aspire-predator-g3-605-d2265668.htm

I've got one more concern, though. I'm buying this computer in the Czech Republic, but I need the OS to be in English. Anyone have any experience with buying computers internationally? Can I choose the OS language when I first start it up? Or will I have to go there in person and specifically order an English operating system? My Czech is pretty good, but I do not want my computer to be in Czech. When I'm fighting with system settings is not the time to be learning more Czech.

From their page : "Unless otherwise specified, the assembly is delivered to a Czech localization."
You should write to Alza that you specifically want English Windows. Probably somewhere in ordering process, you should have space for your comments. Or just email them with your order number.
Keyboard is pretty standard for Czech, it just has one more set of characters on right side.

[Sappho]

I went down to their distribution center / showroom today and just asked. They told me that when you buy a new computer from them, the first time you start Windows, you can choose your language. The guy was confident that the version of windows they ship everything with comes with all the standard European languages, though you can only choose once and then you can't change it later. If I get it home and that turns out not to be the case, I can return it, no questions asked.

I already have a keyboard, so that's not an issue. Czech keyboards can be kind of a pain in the ass, though, to be honest. Most of the keys are in the same place, and if you set the system to EN keyboard it works fine, but some of the symbols on the right (near the enter and right-shift keys) tend to be shuffled around to different places. The keyboard I have is an "international" QWERTY. It has all the Czech symbols printed on the keys to the right of the English standard letters and symbols (as well as some other symbols from different languages), but all the other keys are in the normal places. (It was cheap, too!)

Also, apparently they have a lot of Christmas specials going on, and if I buy the computer during the sales, I also get a free gaming mouse and a 60-day return period (instead of the normal 2-week return period). So that's pretty cool.

I've decided to hold off on actually buying it until mid-week. I've got a letter from the foreigner police waiting for me at the post office, and I want to make sure it's nothing life-altering before dropping 30,000 kc (about $1500) on a computer and a new monitor.

For the monitor, I'm planning to just get something cheap. I've been using laptops for so long that I really, really don't need anything big or fancy. Is there anything I should watch out for, or is it safe to just get a cheap one?

[miauw62]

If you get a recovery CD you can just reinstall it in English if it doesn't come in English by default.

[Mokkun]

This sounds like a good place to ask.
Got a anoyance problem whit my storage/div use machine Whit Windows 7 (Old mainboard and tons of HDDs, not main use machine). I recently to not have a Wifi-router somewhere bought a Wireless card (TP-Link 300mbs Wireless N Adaptor A PCI card) and installed, and thru a program called Connectify hotspot to set up a wifi to use for my phone/tablet/3DS/etc. It kind of works rather well exept one thing, the machine keeps re-enabling powersave on that card making the card turn off after some time. Powerplan have been changed to maximal performance, as there are no disable, advanced setting for wireless card is also set to maximal performace.
Operating System is Windows 7 32-bit.

Second, anyone know of a decent TV-recording card for DVB-T whit ability for Decoding card (Have a CAM module to insert card into). Preferably thru Windows media center, it got such nice coop whit Xbox360 streaming (only thing I use that xbox for), Currently got a Hauppage WinTV HVR-5500 Model 121xxx, it do not cooperate whit the USB Hauppage decoding module, and it require 32bit over 64 bit OS..

Thanks in advance.