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[wierd]

Check for sources of interference on the G or N band you are using.

[Schmaven]

If you're in a position to throw money at the problem, you could try a new external wifi adapter and see if that too has trouble.  That would narrow down the possibilities.

I've got a question - what would prevent a computer from turning all the way off when commanded to shut down?  This particular computer goes through the on screen process of shutting down, the display turns off, but the system fans remain on.  I suspect it's a motherboard or power supply issue, but I suppose it could be something else too.  Any ideas?

[methylatedspirit]

I tried to upgrade a laptop's RAM, but now it doesn't boot. The fans spin, the LED indicator lights up, but the screen is entirely blank. Removing the upgrade stick of RAM, then trying to turn it on again doesn't work either. I disassembled the whole laptop to get to the CMOS battery, but that wasn't removable, at least not without a soldering iron or something.

What do I do now?

[Starver]

Is there any way you 'merely' unplugged the connector that goes to the screen? If the usual LEDs light up (and any usual POST Abeeps, and sounds of HDD seeking, assuming your HDD makes sound seeking...) then I'd wonder if this were the issue.

Although most laptops these days (IME) tend to just have a small RAM-accessing door just for that purpose, so as long as you hadn't disassembled the whole thing in the first place[1] I don't see any reason you'd have been in a position to do that except if it was half-unjiggled in the first place and in turning the thing over, perhaps moving the screen beyond normal 'open' degree, you managed to pop it off completely.

Worst case scenario may be that you managed to drop something conductive in the RAM-hatch (perhaps one of the screws you thought you needed to undo) that found itself at least temporarily crossing to rather unfortunate tracks.

I can't easily imagine the RAM itself is to blame (not if it physically fit the socket, even if it was slightly the wrong sub-spec) but if you're sure it was the act of fitting that delineated working and 'dead' (apart from fan, LED, and maybe other signs of life you missed... ethernet port flickers, eventually, if it has one?) then start looking at that.

Oh, and now you have disassembled it to get to the CMOS battery (a capacitative one?) so when you reassemble, look out for things you didn't unplug but look like they shouldn't be, perhaps. Maybe a good workshop manual is available for download to double-check it all, and shake the thing to check no mini-screws are rattling around in there.


(Covering a lot of bases, there, and there's probably as many more again I didn't cover. Nothing substitutes for being hands-on, though I don't personally relish repairing laptops in person, either, with their finicky and nigh on unique-every-time nature.)

[1] Are they starting to re-permanent the BIOS power, these days? They stopped that a long time ago in favour of either the button-battery clip as per desktop mobos or a fly-leaded mini cell-pack onto a jumper-socket, precisely to allow replacement/reset, though those going for the latter made them ultra-proprietry for the usual laptop "only Dell/Toshiba/whatever-authorise parts" reasons.

[Reelya]

Thought people might enjoy this, it's a project that maps the gyros on a controller to mouse movements, so that you can play with a controller without needing to use a fiddly thumbstick to turn and aim. IDK, seeing as how well it works this kinda could become the normal way of controlling a game in the future. And note, he's doing this on PC, using a controller, with a setup he's never used before, and headshotting people without Aim Assist. So this could be how they finally bring proper aiming to consoles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qlZmXnE1mw

[Jopax]

It seems that me and HDD are a cursed relationship. After last years laptop trouble prompted me to finally get a desktop PC I was hoping the thing would just work. And it kind of did, for a while. In the past few weeks or so I've started experiencing weird stuff with my HDD. The SSD holds the system drive and it's been working flawlessly so far, but the HDD has started disconnecting for some reason.If I'm using something stored on it it tends to cause a crash or a BSOD which is never fun. At first I thought it was the cables at fault so I replaced the data one and switched the PSU ones around a few times. Same deal. I then suspected that it might be a problem with a slightly loose connection port on the motherboard, switching that and using some electrical tape to make the thing jiggle free didn't really help either.
Then, in the past few days it kinda got worse, basically it fails to turn on or get recognized by windows on startup and no amount of fiddling with the cabling helps. What does help is a light tap on the case which pretty much always gets windows to detect it.
I'm at a loss as to what might be the deal here, maybe the drive is faulty and doesn't turn on properly? But I can feel it heating up on startup, even if windows fails to detect it. The motherboard maybe? Another possibly related thing might be that when this does happen the boot time is way longer for whatever reason, hanging for a minute or longer at the motherboard screen that allows you to get into BIOS.

[wierd]

try disabling spindown power management on the drive.

[Jopax]

Looking into that somewhat, the main way to do it seems to be trough hdparm? And that seems to be a session-specific change of the settings form what I can gather. My main issue is it doesn't seem to be active on startup, so changing the settings afterwards doesn't seem like it would help.

I think the hang time on the motherboard screen is somehow connected to all of this but I'm having trouble figuring out how or why that could be.

[wierd]

I am thinking that the drive's bearings are getting a little "Sticky".   Once fully up to speed, it should be fine, but it takes longer to come up, AND, should windows power cycle the drive (to save power), it will take longer than expected to wake up, which can cause a kernel IRQL panic error. (which causes a bluescreen.)

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/prevent-hard-drive-going-sleep-windows

(Another way is to go into device manager, and then in the power profile properties for the drive, say windows is not allowed to manage the power state of the device.)

[Jopax]

I've done the first step, and I can't seem to find anything relating to power settings in the device manager for the drive. Anyways, further digging has led me to the WD forums and it seems this has been a known issue for years now, one of the solutions seems to be exactly what you're suggesting but done trough a registry fix so I'll give that a go I guess.

Edit: Or apparently just turn on hot-swap, that seems to work for some people too. Hopefully something fixes it.

[Starver]

Hot Swap may come at it from the other direction, just making it mind less about the transient unavailability.

It's possible that if it is 'going out of spec', as described, that the problem won't stop at that but heralds further deterioration. Not of the data, but of the means of getting (and putting) the data. Consider being prepared for it getting worse, perhaps.  Not that I'm saying it'll be eventually unreadable (before it would for other reasons, always a full set of risks both natural and induced), just that it wouldn't hurt to consider it.

edited for numerous character-mishits I didn't spot before posting

[Maximum Spin]

Yes, you definitely need to back up this drive no matter what, as with any drive showing signs of failure. Well, assuming there's data you care about on it, so I guess not "no matter what" but this is getting away from the point...

[Reelya]

If it's useful, i use a freeware program called FreeFileSync that will sync two folders, it was useful for backing up a drive of mine that did the same thing, since if the whole thing just stops, FreeFileSync will only copy over the remaining files.

[IonMatrix]

Hey, uh, I kinda need some help...
So, today I just opened Steam like normal, and then there was a client update like normal, and I waited for it. It got stuck on the "installing update" part, and after one hour I told myself "Okay, there must be something wrong" so I closed it. Then Steam won't open no matter what and I can't run any games. I tried reinstalling and after that when I opened the newly installed Steam it told me there was a client update and then the exact same thing happend...

This is kind of a big problem since 99% of my games are on Steam.

[wierd]

Open a command prompt as administrator.
Run this:

Chkdsk C: /f

It will ask if you want schedule at next boot. Say yes.

Reboot.  Let it run.

Reinstall steam.