Computer Strife

Last night whilst I was in the middle of a Blood Bowl game, my PC crashed.  This has happened before and is not unusual given my 5yr old PC is running like a dog and has been having troubles over the past 12mths.  Tried to reboot and it hangs so I have to physically turn it off at the tower.  Again not unusual, but I do know that a good PC wouldn’t have these problems.

So I get under the desk, turn it off... wait… turn it on again and she fires up.  When I do this, quite often the PC will hang on the Windows 98 screen and require me to get under and cold start it again and that sends it into a Safe Mode reboot.  However this time it fires up fine and goes to my network password (although I don’t have a network) screen.  Normally I hit “cancel” and it goes through to the desktop and I can reconnect.

This time however, something unusual happens and it freezes.  I can move the mouse but nothing seems to be happening.  Can’t click anything so after seeing if it will unhang itself (which it doesn’t) I hit ALT-CTRL-DEL and nothing happens.  I do it again and get the Blue Screen of Death.  It asks me to hit ALT-CTRL-DEL again to reboot which I do.

Nothing happens however and I go back under the table and turn the box off at the tower.  I wait a bit and hit the power back on again and the USB ports light up momentarily and then bang.  Nothing.  The PC has died.  I try again.  A brief flicker of power goes through and then it cuts out.  This is still the situation this morning and I have a major problem.

My issue is however is that I am a complete n00b when it comes to hardware.  Software glitches I can fix and I have been fiddling around with my config file to sort out my shutdown/start up problems that cause me to manually cold start the box, but with hardware… I got no idea!

So my technical assessment of my PC is that it is fucked.

Niki starts getting upset about all our photos on the PC (I was way overdue for a backup to be done) but I know that the data is OK, I just need to get the power supply fixed.

I have power to my ADSL modem and the monitor (both have their lights on as per normal) but the tower case is getting nothing.

My n00b knowledge of such things is that there is a power supply thing in there (yes “thing” is a technical term) and that I think all the cold starting has caused it to clap out… so I think if I get that fixed, then she’ll be right.

However the PC is old, its clunky, has been giving me the shits for months and I am thinking of getting a whole new system and turning this one (once fixed) into a “spare PC” that the kids can use and play their games and do whatever with…

But as I posted yesterday, I am very busy this weekend, I have no time to get it fixed or shop for a new system, and I am only beginning to realise how much our PC does around the house.  Niki and I communicate a lot through the day via email and today is pay day which means I am due to sit down and pay all my bills online…

Also, the cash situation isn’t the best as this months pay is committed to dancing fees, Christmas presents and pre-school fees for Brooke on top of the usual stuff.  I am thinking of perhaps buying a system against my salary package and pay FBT rather than PAYE taxes (I was thinking of doing this anyway before the crash), but nevertheless, it will take time to buy, have delivered and set up.

So, if anyone has some advice, let me know… is a power issue an easy fix? Should I focus on the new system or getting the old one fixed?