Skybird
05-15-08, 08:58 AM
I had computer-trouble-day today.
As I used to do every 4-5 months, I opened the tower, removed gfx- and sound board, loosened some cables and connection to have room, and cleaned the dust at the ventilators, and wherever I find it. I am aware of static, and be very carefully not to touch chips and RAMs and ROMs, as far as I am aware of their presence. I use a small, soft brush with natural hair and the metal at the top covered by Scotch tape, compressed air, and a vacuum cleaner (with which I am not touching the components).
Although having it done often, today something went wrong without me becoming aware of it. Just when I tried to reboot and there was just the LEDs constantly shining, but no Beeping, no life on the monitor, and a black screen, I learned that there was a problem.
I spent the next two hours changing the RAM bars, the gfx board, the hard drive, and trying, and when all that did not help I feared that my system had died and the problem being located on the mainboard, which of course means game over.
I called my shop were I use to go regarding computers, and they had no idea after my explanations of what I had done so far, just said that I should clear the BIOS, and if that does not help it would mean the mainboard is dead. I never heared of that and protested that I could not get into the BIOS, as said. They then told me how to do it: change the jumper, remove battery, put in battery and jumper back to normal. I reconfigured the BIOS next, ran into riddles again regarding the priority of CD, DVD and HD as booting device (for some reason the OS does not boot from HD if not the CD but the DVD is defined as secondary booting device), but finally - I was there, and the sun was rising again!
I rebooted, and it went smooth as silk. Even smoother than silk, which is strange.
We all know that windows collects a lot of dust and garbage in the registry, that's why you occasionally clean it, too, via software tools. But that does delay the slowing-down of windows and rebooting, it does not prevent it. That's why I - and some of you certainly as well - use to reinstall roughly once a year these days, I personally just copy over an image from a second HD with a clean installation. that reduces booting time drastically, from over 1-2 minutes to roughly 40 seconds.
I never flashed my BIOS, and never updated it. Having reset it today - gives me a work-ready booting of around 20 seconds (21 seconds from disappearing of ASUS logo, running the BIOS information screen, showing the Windows logo and finally arriving on desktop.
Wowh, what do you say!? :huh:
everything is working fine again over here. Just much faster booting. :sunny:
It is an old Asus P4P800SE with a P-4 at 3 GHz, 2x512 RAM, and an AGP card. And certainly without Vista... :)
As I used to do every 4-5 months, I opened the tower, removed gfx- and sound board, loosened some cables and connection to have room, and cleaned the dust at the ventilators, and wherever I find it. I am aware of static, and be very carefully not to touch chips and RAMs and ROMs, as far as I am aware of their presence. I use a small, soft brush with natural hair and the metal at the top covered by Scotch tape, compressed air, and a vacuum cleaner (with which I am not touching the components).
Although having it done often, today something went wrong without me becoming aware of it. Just when I tried to reboot and there was just the LEDs constantly shining, but no Beeping, no life on the monitor, and a black screen, I learned that there was a problem.
I spent the next two hours changing the RAM bars, the gfx board, the hard drive, and trying, and when all that did not help I feared that my system had died and the problem being located on the mainboard, which of course means game over.
I called my shop were I use to go regarding computers, and they had no idea after my explanations of what I had done so far, just said that I should clear the BIOS, and if that does not help it would mean the mainboard is dead. I never heared of that and protested that I could not get into the BIOS, as said. They then told me how to do it: change the jumper, remove battery, put in battery and jumper back to normal. I reconfigured the BIOS next, ran into riddles again regarding the priority of CD, DVD and HD as booting device (for some reason the OS does not boot from HD if not the CD but the DVD is defined as secondary booting device), but finally - I was there, and the sun was rising again!
I rebooted, and it went smooth as silk. Even smoother than silk, which is strange.
We all know that windows collects a lot of dust and garbage in the registry, that's why you occasionally clean it, too, via software tools. But that does delay the slowing-down of windows and rebooting, it does not prevent it. That's why I - and some of you certainly as well - use to reinstall roughly once a year these days, I personally just copy over an image from a second HD with a clean installation. that reduces booting time drastically, from over 1-2 minutes to roughly 40 seconds.
I never flashed my BIOS, and never updated it. Having reset it today - gives me a work-ready booting of around 20 seconds (21 seconds from disappearing of ASUS logo, running the BIOS information screen, showing the Windows logo and finally arriving on desktop.
Wowh, what do you say!? :huh:
everything is working fine again over here. Just much faster booting. :sunny:
It is an old Asus P4P800SE with a P-4 at 3 GHz, 2x512 RAM, and an AGP card. And certainly without Vista... :)