Search Results

Search found 8876 results on 356 pages for 'hardware raid'.

Page 78/356 | < Previous Page | 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85  | Next Page >

• Webcam becomes "Unknown Device" after Windows Messenger 2011 is installed

  - by Boris

  I have Sony VAIO VGN-NS290J laptop. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I was able to find drivers for all hardware without any problems. Recently, I installed Microsoft Windows Live Essentials 2011, i.e. Windows Live Messenger 2011. Ever since that application is running on my computer, my webcam is not recognized by the OS any more. It is listed as the "Unknown Device" and placed in the Universal Serial Bus controllers group in the Device Manager. There don't seem to be any drivers for this webcam. It's a standard Sony Motion Eye web camera and Sony does not offer any drivers for it. There is one application to download that utilizes the camera, but there are no drivers (and the system is showing the same behavior regardless of the presence of the application). It happens from time to time that the webcam becomes recognized by the OS again, after a couple of restarts; but not always. Then it becomes unknown again. I am absolutely positive that this issue is caused by the Windows Live Messenger 2011, because same symptoms caused the same effects before. I wish to be able to continue to use this software, but also to use my webcam. I was wondering if anyone had a similar issue and if there is a way to fix it. Thanks for all the help, I appreciate it. Update: I have discovered a pattern - if the camera goes astray, restarting the machine does not bring it back; but switching the computer off and turning it back on does. Every time! This is getting super complicated :)

  Read the article

• IBM Thinkpad 240 - Best way to boot from floppy to USB - Best Linux for 300 MHz 128 MB RAM 800x600 s

  - by zillion

  Mostly I still have that old 'ultraportable' laptop that is mostly like a pre-netbook era laptop and a friend and programmer needs a computer because the one he was using just broke and he has to wait until the new one arrive in 4-6 weeks ... This laptop has no LAN connection and CD-ROM so be prepared for a real challenge! All hardware is well supported on Windows XP (included drivers on the Windows XP CD) and on Linux out-of-the-box (but the screen need a special configuration.) Mostly any Linux that will work well with Skype (USB or regular headset), any MSN client and a text writer for code will do. What I have tested so far: Slitaz 2 don't boot because the floppy of GRUB4DOS don't see the USB drive (fully working and tested on my regular laptop), Damn Small Linux was working but was needing a special screen configuration that I don't remember (in the boot options of the floppy) and now I'm thinking about Puppy Linux that is seen to work totally out of the box with it but I will need an old Puppy version (1 or 2 I think) and the Wakepup floppy ... If you got some ideas to help or to try I'm open!

  Read the article

• Chipset fan on the frtiz - compressed air hasn't fixed anything - is there anything I can do?

  - by Anthony

  Yesterday, my computer started to make an annoying whining noise. Knowing that this is likely a fan issue, I opened the case and proceeded to determine which fan was causing the issue. I got some compressed air and tried cleaning out the dust around it (and the rest of the computer while I was at it). This hasn't seemed to fix the issue. Now, if it were just any fan, I would probably just replace the fan - they're relatively cheap after all. However, this is a special fan. Aside: For what its worth, I feel bad that the graphics card blocks part of the fan, but it is the only slot the graphics card fits, so I had no choice. After pulling out my motherboard user guide, it looks like this is a fan placed directly on top of the chipset. To be perfectly honest, I have no clue what the purpose of the chipset is - but it sounds important. After some quick research, I see that it is responsible for providing the bridge between my CPU, RAM and graphics, among other things. Just a quick search at Newegg tells me that chipset fans can be purchased at pretty reasonable prices (< 20 dollars). Is it practical to replace this fan? It is an old computer as computers go and I wouldn't be terribly upset to upgrade the motherboard and processor, so perhaps this is a sign. Hardware Specs: Motherboard: Asus A8N-E Chipset: NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra

  Read the article

• How to transfer Windows Vista disk image to new machine

  - by Mike Hobbs

  I'm trying to upgrade a user's machine to some better hardware. I know of Easy Transfer, but I'd rather not have to reinstall all the programs that are already present. (Some of which are no longer available, anyway). Instead, I'm trying to transfer the entire disk image from one machine to the other, but I ran into issues. If I copy the partition image over to the new machine using Clonezilla, I get errors on boot saying that I need to insert the Vista install disk and run repair. I do that, but it then says that it is unable to repair whatever it is that's broken. Next, I tried to sysprep the old machine before creating the image, but sysprep fails saying that it encountered some sort of system error. Should it be possible to sysprep any arbitrary machine, or does it only work on a relatively clean install? Could it be a missing driver that is tripping me up? The new machine is a fairly stock desktop that shouldn't need any special drivers beyond what's already present in standard Vista. Are there any foolproof methods for doing this sort of thing?

  Read the article

• How can I tell if a replacement display is compatible with my laptop?

  - by moraleida

  I have an Acer Aspire 4810TZ from 2010 which I truly love - it's a 3 year old notebook that still carries on for about 5 to 6h straight off the battery. I've also invested in it with an SSD and extra RAM and it's fine for my use right now. I'd really rather not just dump it. Now... its screen is dead and I'm looking for replacement parts, but it turns out to be a kind of expensive display - AUO B140XW02 14" LED. US$ 125 was the cheapest I found here (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). The official dealer sells them for US$ 175. I'm aware of How do I know if a LCD is compatible with my Laptop? and Can I replace a laptop screen with one of a different resolution? but the answers don't really help me in this case. Also Replacing an LCD screen in a laptop gives me a hint but I'm completely dumb at hardware so this is why i'm asking: Is it possible to buy an LCD or a lower grade LED screen with the same connectors? What characteristics should I look for to find out if a certain display is compatible?

  Read the article

• Why a 10 years old software still is so slow even today?

  - by Cawas

  I just noted this question due to a game (which happens to be Diablo 2), but the matter of fact is: why is my brand new mac book pro, made in 2009 with latest technology (tho it's the cheapest one) can't rival my computer which used to run this much faster back in 2000? Really, it was much faster on my AMD K6 450 back in those days, and I could even run two clients at same time with no slow down. I've always had the feeling this machine was slow, but this is a very odd way to attest it. Granted, the machine is smaller, runs on wifi and "boots" way faster thanks to sleep mode. But other than that, what have we evolved after all?! I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be graphical card's fault. Sure if I buy latest technology it will run fast, and probably most people here can confirm this and won't even understand my question. But the thing is, all the hardware is supposedly much faster and better than the stuff from 10 years ago. The software and operating system became more complex, but also more well refined. Now I'm trying a piece of software that is actually 10 years old and it's not getting any better results! Why?

  Read the article

• How much does a computer actually cost?

  - by Cawas

  Ok, so when you buy a new notebook, you spend about $1 or $2 thousand with the OS included. When you make your own desktop machine you can get as low as $100 for a good one today, with not a single piece of software included. It can't be much lower, but it can go lot higher. People, including myself, tend to believe that's the price of a computer, but then there comes the softwares. I just stumbled upon a nice piece of application I could use myself, but it's very specific, very tiny, and most people would never bother about this. And it costs "just $12". That is a lot for something I may use just once or twice! OS upgrades, hardware malfunction, and your custom set of software actually raise the computer price quite a lot, thus this question: how much we pay in the end for our personal computers? I'd like to see some statistics on that. Maybe divided into 3 categories or something, but some data with averages, minimum and "maximum" costs would be very nice. Maybe a "cost per year" would be nice. Just wondering.

  Read the article

• GA 8KNXP Rev1.0: 4 GB installed, only 3.5 GB recognized by BIOS

  - by hurikhan77

  I've installed 2x 1 GB and 4x 512 MB memory into my GA-8KNXP system which would sum up to 4 GB. The specification from the manual says: Maximum memory support: 4 GB. If all six slots are utilized, slot 5+6 may only equipped with single-sided RAM modules. And so I did. Anyway: The BIOS counts up to 3.5 GB and finishes there. Also my Linux system reports only 3.5 GB of memory although 4 GB memory support is activated in the kernel. So I suppose this is a memory mapping issue or a hardware issue. I've tried removing only on of the 512 MB memory modules leaving 5 modules in place. But that just stopped the system from powering on correctly (screen stays black although fans and leds come to live). Dual Channel was detected and enabled so the system technically found all 6 modules. "dmidecode" in Linux reports only memory in slots 1 to 4 and ignores slots 5+6, so it only detects 3 GB of memory. It also says the system would support up to 16 GB of memory with 4 GB modules per slot. I think technically the chipset should be able to offer and utilize the complete 4 GB memory range. Any clues what else I could check? Or do I have just to live with 0.5 GB wasted memory?

  Read the article

• Slow boot for OS and external devices

  - by Derek Van Cuyk

  I have been having this problem intermittently but as of yesterday, it has become more consistent. It originally started when I rebooted my PC at home and the OS (Windows 8) sat in a loop appearing to do nothing while loading. I figured since this was a new installation, that something may have just become corrupted and I decided to reinstall. So I tried to boot off of the thumb drive which had the installation iso and encountered pretty much the same issue. Same with the DVD drive. So, I rebooted once again and left it to load the entire night just to see if it ever would and sure enough this morning, Windows had finally loaded. Authentication had the same roblem albeit not quite as long (took about 5 minutes to authenticate). However, once I was in, everything appeared to be working fine and as quick as normal with the exception of when I tried to scan the C drive for any errors, which ran unbearably slow (45 minutes and before I left for work and was not finished scanning a 64GB SSD drive). I mention that I have had this issue but never when loading the OS. Before it occurred when trying to install windows 7 from a different DVD drive than the one I have now. It took me about 3 hours to do it since I had to wait sometimes 30+ min for each step to finish processing. Does anyone have an idea as to what can cause this? I am assuming it is the motherboard since it is responsible for communication with all the devices I'm having issues with but I cannot find anyone else who has had a problem like this and don't want to drop more money on a MB if it isn't the problem. Hardware: Motherboard: Asus M4A78T-E Socket AM3/ AMD 790GX/ Hybrid CrossFireX Hard Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+180 64GB Micro SATA II 3GB/S 1.8 Inch Solid State Drive SVP180S2/64G Optical Drive: Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Internal 12XReadable and DVD-Writable Drive with Lightscribe SH-B123L/BSBP Thanks, Derek

  Read the article

• Minimum specs needed to run 1080p HD movies?

  - by Wesley

  Hi all, I was wondering how low you could go with hardware that would still be able to smoothly run HD movies. My current plan is around $215 CAD w/o a hard drive: Intel Pentium 4 @ 3.2 GHz - 1GB DDR/SDRAM - 512MB X1600 Pro AGP - 350W PSU - ECS P4VXASD2+ - Bluray/DVD-RW drive. As for the hard drive, could I just get a 7200RPM IDE HDD? Also, I'm planning on installing XP Pro SP3, unless Ubuntu somehow has an advantage. I'm not wanting this to be a media center only computer... just want it to be a normal computer with just enough oomph to play HD movies. Thanks in advance. EDIT1: Forgot to mention that the Bluray/DVD-RW drive is SATA, but I was planning on getting an SATA-IDE adapter or a PCI card with SATA. EDIT2: Oh yes... if I get a PCI card with SATA, would you then recommend I use an SATA hard drive as well? That would leave all the IDE ports on the motherboard unused... is that a good idea?

  Read the article

• How to pipe internet radio into a tuner?

  - by JW

  UPDATE: Thanks everyone for the ideas! This was an area I knew very little about but now I can talk with a little more expertise about it. Much appreciated! Visited my dad this weekend and he wants to pipe some internet radio he's found down to a tuner on quite a distance away in the house. He uses computers for only very basic things: e-mail, getting the Post crossword, checking Yahoo!, checking recipes, etc. There's currently one computer in the house (no router). My initial suggestion (without any research whatsoever) was to get a wireless router and a netbook for downstairs near the tuner, but he initially wasn't too keen about having another computer down there. Anyway, is there any computer hardware that could magically pipe the audio output from the computer down to one set of (RCA) audio inputs on the tuner? Wireless isn't necessary but it probably would be easier. Anyway, thanks for your suggestions! UPDATE Thanks everyone! Voted up all of your suggestions now that I have 15 rep. Much appreciated.

  Read the article

• How can I know if a replacement display is compatible with my laptop?

  - by moraleida

  I have an Acer Aspire 4810TZ from 2010 which I truly love - it's a 3 year old notebook that still carries on for about 5 to 6h straight off the battery. I've also invested in it with an SSD and extra RAM and it's fine for my use right now. I'd really rather not just dump it. Now... its screen is dead and I'm looking for replacement parts, but it turns out to be a kind of expensive display - AUO B140XW02 14" LED. US$ 125 was the cheapest I found here (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). The official dealer sells them for US$ 175. I'm aware of How do I know if a LCD is compatible with my Laptop? and Can I replace a laptop screen with one of a different resolution? but the answers don't really help me in this case. Also Replacing an LCD screen in a laptop gives me a hint but I'm completely dumb at hardware so this is why i'm asking: Is it possible to buy an LCD or a lower grade LED screen with the same connectors? What characteristics should I look for to find out if a certain display is compatible?

  Read the article

• Computer turns itself on after any off mode

  - by Patrick

  Whenever I shut down my computer, or put it in sleep/hybernate, it turns on after two seconds. It doesn't post, it just powers on and then idles. To actually turn it off, I switch off the psu. The problem is now, whenever I switch the psu on and try to boot, it doesn't always turn on. It takes a good amount of flicking the psu switch on and off before the motherboard lights up. So far I've determined the things its not: its not caused by the mouse or network waking up the computer. I've been able to go into hybernate for the past year. And all "wake on X" settings in the bios are diabled. its not a scheduled task waking up the computer at a given hour, it occurs every single time its not due to an upgrade or new installation, since I haven't done either in a very long time I'm sure its a hardware issue. So I'd like to know, is my psu dead, or the motherboard? The psu is an Antec Earthwatts 600w, the motherboard is an Asus P5Q-E, both one year old.

  Read the article

• GA 8KNXP Rev1.0: 4GB installed, only 3.5 recognized by BIOS

  - by hurikhan77

  I've installed 2x 1 GB and 4x 512 MB memory into my GA-8KNXP system which would sum up to 4GB. The specs from the manual say: Maximum memory support: 4GB. If all six slots are utilized, slot 5+6 may only equipped with single-sided RAM modules. And so I did. Anyway: The BIOS counts up to 3.5 GB and finishes there. Also my linux system reports only 3.5 GB of memory although 4 GB memory support is activated in the kernel. So I suppose this is a memory mapping issue or a hardware issue. I've tried removing only on of the 512 MB memory modules leaving 5 modules in place. But that just stopped the system from powering on correctly (screen stays black although fans and leds come to live). Dual Channel was detected and enabled so the system technically found all 6 modules. "dmidecode" in linux reports only memory in slots 1 to 4 and ignores slots 5+6, so it only detects 3 GB of memory. It also says the system would support up to 16 GB of memory with 4 GB modules per slot. I think technically the chipset should be able to offer and utilize the complete 4 GB memory range. Any clues what else I could check? Or do I have just to live with 0.5 GB wasted memory?

  Read the article

• What can I do to prevent system power downs?

  - by Joe King

  Yesterday I was given my brother's old laptop - core i7, 2.67GHz, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Win7 64 bit. It's a Sony Vaio Z11. Approx 18 months old. When running something computationally intensive, the fan starts up and after about 30 secs it just powers itself down with no warning. I guess it is overheating. There is nothing in the event logs to suggest what is causing it - the only thing I see is "the last system shutdown was unexpected" or something similar. This is a problem for me because I use a lot of number crunching apps, which pretty much makes it useless to me. I would like to know if there is anything I can do, other than the obvious things I've done already - open up and clean out dust, re-install the OS. According to my brother, this problem started about 6 months ago when it was already outside warranty. If it's just used for simple things - web browsing, word processing etc, the problem does not occur. Any ideas for what I can do to fix this ? Update: I found that the laptop has 2 hardware settings for graphics: Speed and Stamina - the Speed setting seems to use an nvidia GEforce GT 330M, while the Stamina setting uses an Intel chipset. With the setting on Speed, I can hear the fan the whole time, and the system powers down after a short while (5-10 mins) even just doing basic tasks (browsing this site for example), but doesn't shut down if I just leave it switched on. In this mode it also sometimes just freezes the screen and I have to power off myself. However on Stamina setting it only powers down when doing number crunching and never freezes the screen.

  Read the article

• What are the biggest, best CPUs that support Physical Address Extension?

  - by Giffyguy

  I'm looking for a CPU that will support PAE and fit into an LGA775 socket. This combination of technology is very much preferred for my current server hardware/software setup. My priorities in order of highest to lowest: PAE & LGA775 At least 1066Mhz FSB Largest CPU cache possible Multiple Cores if possible HyperThreading if possible Most other factors are of little-to-no consequence. I'm finding it very difficult to figure out what my options are. Intel doesn't have much useful information on PAE (since x64 is so dominant), and Wikipedia simply says that "PAE is provided by Intel Pentium Pro (and above) CPUs - including all later Pentium-series processors except the 400 MHz bus versions of the Pentium M." All of Intel's listed Pentium CPU's support Intel64, which makes me seriously doubt they will support PAE with a 32-bit OS. And Wikipedia's claim is so vague, I have no idea if they mean up-to-and-including the x64 Prescott CPUs. PAE is supposed to be an aspect of the x86 architecture, and I believe it is no longer supported in an x64 environment. Please correct me if I am wrong.

  Read the article

• Hosting a server for websites, ftp and random use at home?

  - by Zolomon

  I'm wondering what's the best option for me if I want to move all my hosted websites (from a hosting company) to a server at my own home? Basically, the needs I have are: be able to host websites using PHP/ASP.NET (haven't really decided yet - both would be preferred!) enable FTP so I can create accounts for my family members to access the server for file handling SSH SSL - for secure connections (this is something you have to buy/apply for per domain, not sure if there are any server side settings that have to be made) be able to stream video remote desktop host home-brew applications that can run as services use either MySQl/SQLite/SQL for relational database storage What should I think of before I buy a server? What hardware will I need, what will limit my server? I basically want to learn networking better as I'm a software and web developer but haven't had the resources to acquire any serious toys until now. At the time of writing, most of my websites have 60 visits/day so I don't suspect them to be very demanding. Is there something I haven't thought of that I should have? What OS would you suggest I run? FreeBSD vs Windows Server vs ?

  Read the article

• Which CPU for XEN - LAMP testbed - Budget

  - by deploymonkey

  Dear serverfault knowledgeables, im in a decision dilemma right now, which I can't resolve due to lack of hands on experience. I need to build a testbed for basically virtualizing a LAMP application (os'ses not yet decided) including server side calculations. I'll opt for XEN since it seems better supported by cloud hosters at the moment. The hardware is for a proof of concept for a startup doing saas and might be used for closed live alpha/beta later on. After testing, the testbed might be a) deployed as a colocated white box server b) used as workstation Single socket is enough. We want to have ECC memory for reliability, this excludes most of the consumer line at intel. If intel CPU, then threaded cpu (HT) is preferred have at least 16 gig ram If justified by price and reliability is not too bad, a high quality desktop MB instead of a server MB would be worth a try It came down to the opteron 6128 vs. the xeon 5620 for me after a lot of research, but I don't necessarily have to be right. Which CPU is preferrable, concerning TCO (MB price, power requirements 24/7...) , Opteron 6128 or Xeon 5620? Which one offers better performance in real world applications? (Do You have any other suggestions I probably overlooked?) Thank You for Your consideration

  Read the article

• Webcam becomes "Unknown Device" after Windows Messenger 2011 is installed

  - by Boris

  I have Sony VAIO VGN-NS290J laptop. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I was able to find drivers for all hardware without any problems. Recently, I installed Microsoft Windows Live Essentials 2011, i.e. Windows Live Messenger 2011. Ever since that application is running on my computer, my webcam is not recognized by the OS any more. It is listed as the "Unknown Device" and placed in the Universal Serial Bus controllers group in the Device Manager. There don't seem to be any drivers for this webcam. It's a standard Sony Motion Eye web camera and Sony does not offer any drivers for it. There is one application to download that utilizes the camera, but there are no drivers (and the system is showing the same behavior regardless of the presence of the application). It happens from time to time that the webcam becomes recognized by the OS again, after a couple of restarts; but not always. Then it becomes unknown again. I am absolutely positive that this issue is caused by the Windows Live Messenger 2011, because same symptoms caused the same effects before. I wish to be able to continue to use this software, but also to use my webcam. I was wondering if anyone had a similar issue and if there is a way to fix it. Thanks for all the help, I appreciate it. Update: I have discovered a pattern - if the camera goes astray, restarting the machine does not bring it back; but switching the computer off and turning it back on does. Every time! This is getting super complicated :)

  Read the article

• How to get data out of a Maxtor Shared Storage II that fails to boot?

  - by Jonik

  I've got a Maxtor Shared Storage II (RAID1 mode) which has developed some hardware failure, apparently: it fails to boot properly and is unreachable via network. When powering it on, it keeps making clunking/chirping disk noise and then sort of resets itself (with a flash of orange light in the usually-green LEDs); it then repeats this as if stuck in a loop. In fact, even the power button does nothing now – the only way I can affect the device at all is to plug in or pull out the power cord! (To be clear, I've come to regard this piece of garbage (which cost about 460 €) as my worst tech purchase ever. Even before this failure I had encountered many annoyances about the drive: 1) the software to manage it is rather crappy; 2) it is way noisier that what this type of device should be; 3) when your Mac comes out of sleep, Maxtor's "EasyManage" cannot re-mount the drive automatically.) Anyway, the question at hand is how to get my data out of it? As a very concrete first step, is there a way to open this thing without breaking the plastic casing into pieces? It is far from obvious to me how to get beyond this stage; it opens a little from one end but not from the other. If I somehow got the disks out, I could try mounting the disk(s) on one of the Macs or Linux boxes I have available (although I don't know yet if I'd need some adapters for that). (NB: for the purposes of this question, never mind any warranty or replacement issues – that's secondary to recovering the data.)

  Read the article

• Screen occasionally flashes black when under load, sometimes does not recover

  - by Oak

  I've built a brand new machine, but to my horror my monitor occasionally flashes black for around a second, then returning to normal. This happens under load (watching videos / playing games) but only sometimes; e.g. it doesn't occur in "Batman: Arkham City" but does in "XCOM: Enemy Unknown". When watching videos, it also occurs when not watching them full-screen, and it sometimes even occurs when the machine isn't doing anything, just sitting at the desktop and moving the mouse around. Has anyone ran into this problem and knows of any solution? Additionally, sometimes after the black screen, it won't return to normal, instead turning completely corrupt. In these cases even quitting the application doesn't help, but physically disconnecting and reconnecting the monitor fixes the problem. This problem did not occur on my earlier machine which used the same physical monitor. Additional details: Windows Server 2012, configured as Windows 8, with latest updates installed NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti, with latest driver installed Ample amounts of CPU and RAM for playing the above games and for watching videos. I've read about similar problems elsewhere but could not find a working solution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt00C-HXFbA&noredirect=1 http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/59126-monitor-flashing-black.html https://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4079098908?page=4 http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/347422-33-screen-flickering-black-nvidia-driver-update

  Read the article

• how to diagnose a hard system seizure? Dell+Ubuntu

  - by rob

  I've got Ubuntu 9.10 on a Dell Vostro 420 desktop, a little over a year old, which I use for plain vanilla work stuff (email, web, terminal, text editor). Every now and then, at totally random times, it completely freezes on me. Hard. Mouse and keyboard stop working, cursor stops blinking, clock stops moving. All I can do is hold down the power button on the front of the box to shut it off. Sometimes it happens after several months of continuous uptime; sometimes it happens a few minutes after a reboot, while all I've done is open a terminal to look at log files, or maybe firefox to do a google search. Each time, there is nothing at all in /var/log/messages at the time of the crash. This makes it seem like a hardware problem, and indeed a few months ago I opened the box and wiggled everything and the problem went away for a while. But now it's back. I went in and checked everything, took out each RAM card and reseated. No luck. I ran all the system diagnostics (the long version) and everything passed with flying colors. Something is messed up in this box, but without any useful logs or failed tests, how in the world am I going to find it? And of course, Dell's not gonna help me cause I went and replaced Windows with Ubuntu. What steps would you take next to track down this problem?

  Read the article

• Why has my computer started to make noises when I turn it on after I put it into sleep mode for the first time a week ago?

  - by Acid2

  I would usually have my pc on all day and fully shut it down at night time before I went to bed. I decided to put it into sleep mode instead the other day and everything was fine but when I woke it from sleep, I was presented with the blue screen of death and it started with some weird noise that sounded like some spinning part was off balance or possibly hitting something periodically. Sounds like it could be a fan or maybe the HDD. I'm not sure why sleep mode would mess up the hardware. Anyway, now sometimes, randomly, when I turn my computer on from a previous shut down, I still get to hear the noise but the start-up is normal. Sometimes I don't hear anything for the entire duration while I have it on and sometimes it goes away after a few minutes and sometimes it doesn't and I have to restart, like it isn't going away right now. I can hear the noise as I type this. Anyone got possible solutions? I don't want to open the system and mess up other stuff. I'm also not sure if I should take it somewhere to have it fixed - it might not make the noise then and work like normal and nothing would seem like needing to be fixed. Add: I'm running Windows 7, if that's of any relevance.

  Read the article

• Computer won't start up. Stuck on Lenovo splash screen. Help Diagnose

  - by Ace Legend

  I have some (I'm not sure exactly what model) Lenovo 21" IdeaCentre. Honestly, the computer works off and on. I have had problems with it not being able to shutdown, which I fixed. The fan seems to be constantly running, a few other problems as well. Anyway, nobody was using it when all of a sudden it switched to a blue screen. I was in the kitchen, but when I got over to the computer I read the message. It said something about bad drivers, but that is all I saw and then it restarted. However, when it got to the Lenovo Splash screen, nothing happened. I waited there for over 10 minutes, but still nothing. I tried to turn of the computer, but the only way to do it was to pull out the power cable. I then removed all USB devices and tried again. Still nothing. It also won't respond to keyboard input when I try to use enter to interrupt normal startup. My guess is some piece of hardware is damaged inside the machine. However, I have no idea what piece it is. Does anybody have any idea what could be wrong with it? Thanks.

  Read the article

• Computer will not boot - disk read error - cannot boot from HD or DVD

  - by Grant Palin

  This is a 3 year-old system: HP a1640n. There have been no issues with it in the past. I added a video card 2 years ago, and more memory 1 year ago, both without issues. There haven't been any recent hardware changes. I did install Win7 in Oct., but there were no issues with that either. I used the computer fine two nights ago, and turned it off. Yesterday, I tried to turn it on, and got the error: "A Disk Read Error Occurred. Press CTRL ALT DEL to restart" So I restart, see the initial start screen (HP) and enter the BIOS. The hard drive and dvd drive appear to be listed, but the names are gibberish text. I tried putting a Windows disk in the dvd drive, and continued with the boot, but the disk did not get recognized. Even though the BIOS was set to check for optical media before the hard drive. Back to the error screen. If the computer would boot from a cd or dvd, I would just figure the hard drive needed replacing. But both being problematic worries me. Is this a matter of replacing both the hard drive and dvd drive, or might it be an indication of a bigger problem? Thanks for any advice.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85  | Next Page >