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[zombie urist]

An old laptop won't boot up. I'm pretty sure this is a hardware issue. Whats the best way to determine the source of the problem?

[Aklyon]

Does it beep when you attempt to turn it on, and if so, how many beeps?

[JWNoctis]

Incidentally, when was the last time your laptop was turned on?

A capacitor could have failed, and I've seen plenty of this happening on the public computer of my campus - after a summer break about 40% of them refused to turn on with failed capacitor in their power supply. A laptop shouldn't be that much different as similar capacitors can be found both in the adapter and computer itself.

[zombie urist]

I'll check the beeping thing tomorrow, as I can't access it now.

In the few weeks or so before it broke completely, it worked but made really loud noises all the time.

The computer still turns on fine, but the monitor shows a white screen. The keyboard lights and other lights function as normal.

[Tellemurius]

I'll check the beeping thing tomorrow, as I can't access it now.

In the few weeks or so before it broke completely, it worked but made really loud noises all the time.

The computer still turns on fine, but the monitor shows a white screen. The keyboard lights and other lights function as normal.

welp that sounds like heat suffocation and the motherboard died.

[zombie urist]

Well fuck. Do you think its worth tinkering with then?

[Tellemurius]

Well fuck. Do you think its worth tinkering with then?

umm sure you can use it for target practice

[Aklyon]

Well fuck. Do you think its worth tinkering with then?

umm sure you can use it for target practice

You could probably also use it to hit people with.

[Arni]

A different question:
I got meself a new motherboard and Windows 7 on a SSD. My old Harddisk i intend to use as Storage disk. I just left it with the Vista partition. I never had any problems with the Harddisk.
But now it's overheating (shutting down to prevent physical damage) when I close the computer case (the HDD has space for 1 more HDD above and below)
It seems it just speeds up to maximum speed quite a lot for no real reason and stays at 100% speed which causes the heat.
Any Ideas what  could be the cause?

[Tellemurius]

maximium speeds for what, the hard drive? Are you hearing the fan going loud when it overheats?

[JWNoctis]

Sounds like the fan rather than the hard drive. If the hard drive goes like that you'll likely never get any more data out of it.

Did you add any thermal grease between the CPU and the heatsink? Or did you actually accidentally knock the heatsink out of its mounting when you changed the hard drive?

Something does not sound right here.

[GuardianTempest]

Okay, give me some assurance here since a new router arrived today. My family agreed on the idea of getting a router some time ago so that I can share some internet for the household and it just arrived and I'm installing it tomorrow. I'm quite fond of my reliable wired broadband connection, I'm very worried of the thought of gaming on wireless, I have a firm belief in wireless lag and possible connection problems. Before you say 'it depends on the router', it's a pretty good one, but is it good enough to divert my direct feed from my laptop to it?

And another thing, is there a program or something to monitor whoever is connected so I can check if any neighbor got lucky with the password guessing? I don't like people seeping my wi-fi (though I was guilty of it for a brief period before discovering the cable has enough length to reach my laptop from my retired desktop).

[JWNoctis]

AFAIK wireless routers are not usually laggy, as long as other computers on the same network are not using the same cable to do other high-bandwidth stuff like bulk downloading w/ download manager. Some routers have quality-of-service management, but I wouldn't count too much on that. And you can visit some speed test site and test out the roundtrip time yourself with and without the router.

About the next question, you can usually check connected devices on the router's configuration page. While other methods exist, this is the most reliable one. Also, use strong password and WPA2 encryption. Some routers -not really sure about this, but at least mobile hotspots do- might also support device whitelisting, but that might cause inconvenience if, for example, your or your family's friends come for a LAN session or something.

[Aklyon]

Wireless has worked perfectly fine for me, but then again my laptop is really the only computer doing major work here. The closest thing anyone else does is Netflix.

[miauw62]

I... think this goes here? Tablets count as computers, right?


Either way, as some of you may know, I got a samsung galaxy tab 7.0 for Christmas, yay!

Except... Not really. It now lacks sound. Well, it doesn't lack sound, but every sound is replaced by loud and sharp screeching. Turning silent mode on only works for touch sounds, and not for youtube videos or games. Turning the volume down doesn't help either. I have restarted it several times. This is annoying as fuck because it means that my tablet has basically been reverted to a mobile browser wherever I have a wifi network avaiable.

There don't seem to be many solutions that I can find for this online... So, can anybody help me?