Away, unfortunately
 

A few months ago, my old IBM PC (an Aptiva, actually) finally gave up the ghost, as its power button and/or supply decided to no longer work, after 5+ years of service to me. I had a couple of weeks where all I had was a laptop from work, but eventually got a new case, processor, power supply, moved hard drive, dvd-rom, decoder card, etc all into the new case, downloaded all the dang drivers (because Micro Center didn't bother to give me the CD-ROM that went with the motherboard, and all of the audio/video is built into the board) and got everything working. And everything was fine. Still running Win98SE, it did need the occasional reboot to free up the 256 MB of RAM, because Windows is still a bloated RAM hog no matter how much you throw at it. And everything was fine. Until yesterday.
Yesterday it flashed a few blue screens at me. BSODs. No problem, I hit the reset button, and nothing happened. Nothing on the screen at all. It sounded like it was trying to reboot but I couldn't tell. I reached to the back of the unit, where I hadn't really reached in 3 months, flicked off the main switch, flicked it back on, and turned on the power from the front. The BIOS started making strange noises, and still nothing on the monitor. In the Mac world we've had names for these things, whether the Mac was using an older Motorola 68000 series CPU or a newer PowerPC, and that was a "Chime of Death." That's certainly what this sounded like.
I tried it again. Same notes. Not good. Gave it a while to cool off, and tried again, and still, the same beeps. Much later I turned it on and it came on fine. Ran scandisk. Ran scandisk AND the surface scan. Nothing much. Tried to start Windows. It said it just found my scanner for the first time (which is odd, I'd had it on both the old and new case for ages). Got that software setup. Started running ...tried to get to e-mail or anything else I need....BSOD. Not good. Ran scandisk again. Minor glitch, no biggie.
So I went over to Micro Center. It's been just over 90 days (more like 100 or so) since I bought the case/motherboard, but that's just the wrong side of the 90 day warranty, so it'll be $75 to test it. No exceptions.
I found out from my brother that the Global (or at least what used to be called Global) Outlet store charges $40 to put a PC up on a bench for such diagnostics.
Came home and tried it again, after it'd been off for oh, 18 hours or so, and it started up, and even started Windows, but is now restarting randomly....
I'll have to take it in, and I'll be without everything except e-mail (which I can do via the web) for a few days. I don't have that laptop as a backup anymore, because I don't work for those people anymore either....
I'm really getting sick and tired of these things. I wish I had a Mac again :P
See you when/if I get it back.

dude that sucks... I know how you feel! After my last period with downtime I bought a POS machine that I keep as a spare just in case.

Good luck and hurry back.

Good luck Dadaist! Hope you are back on soon...

sucks... sucks REALLY bad...

If you’re going to be secretive about everything, that’s OK. We respect your privacy.;) Just hurry back to us.:)

Sounds like there's a memory problem to me.........and the "BIOS started making strange noises" is quite important during the POST (Power On Self Test) if there is an error the system will indicate the error with a series of beeps from the computer speaker.......memory errors are usually identified by....beep pause beep pause beep pause which continues until you turn the power off. A video card error would produce 3 rapid beeps and often 1 longer beep after that.

Computers..............I love 'em :D:D:D

This was...and I'll try to do this as best I can in just text...
*beeeeeeeep* *beep* *beep* all in the same pitch as a normal startup beep.
Then a *BEEP* *_BEEP_* in two more tones, the second lower than the first one. I told the guy at Tigerdirect.com (that's the new name of the outlet store) that it sounded to me like hardware, and he hooked it up, but when I told him about how the only way to get the thing to start correctly was to go through step by step startup, then skip reading the windows registry (say no to the first question) but YES to all others, he seemed to think I'm going to need my registry cleaned out and re-initialized. He better NOT! Regardless of how f---ed up the registry is, it STILL works. I still get wireless Internet, I still have all my apps working, and most importantly, I have a region-free DVD-ROM. If he screws THAT up, I'm gonna be pissed.
I noticed that while scandisk did a whole 2-3 hour surface scan with no problems, if I let it go to Windows, it would restart spontaneously, and without warning. I'm starting to agree with FP that it's probably RAM, as, due to the design of the motherboard, RAM is shared between video and main memory (the amount shared is allocated in the BIOS - 256 total installed, and video uses 64). I probably could have checked that theory myself with a spare 128MB unit of PC2100 DDR, but after the bashing my fingers took changing the 128 out for the 256, I decided not to. I'll let someone else do it :P
Maybe I can get them to install a case fan too, as right now it's only got a CPU fan. And hopefully nothing on the motherboard itself is 'burned out.'

This will be my last post today - they're supposed to get a hold of me tonight about the unit, so we'll see. More details later.

By the way, if I could get a cheap PC (like the Wal-mart ones, or even some at tiger direct) with NO OS, does anyone know how well Linux is supporting 802.11b these days? Whether with an internal card or a USB external wireless connector?

Wish I could help. I couldn't understand what you were talking about in those 'puter-related posts.

Hurry back!

Well, they never called last night. If I don't hear anything by noon today I'm going to call them. I'll keep you guys posted. This'll be my last post today....

Well, they can't seem to "duplicate the problem" on their bench. Which probably means things are cooler in there than they are in my bedroom. Surprise. They're going to test for software faults, but if they fuck around with my registry and I lose my peripherals I'm gonna be pissed. I still think I might have them install a case cooling fan, if not a completely independent video card so that the 256 MB DDR isn't shared between video and CPU anymore.

Again, this will be my last post this weekend. I'll have a lot of catchup to do when I get my PC back.

Hope that they get to the bottom of this soon dadaist.. Not to worry.. the same threads will still be around when you have time to post..

Hope you use all your free time for good :)

sounds to me like ethier a cooling issue, or a ram issue. Do you play any games? when my ram was going bad windows would boot, but games would suddenly stop unexpectedly. However if you let it set all night, and it worked, it makes it seem like you have a bad solder joint on the motherboard possibly.

I'm trying to remember what I was doing when it first froze up - just surfing the Internet I think. No I don't really play any games these days that are graphics intensive. I had to stop doing such things because the Aptiva couldn't handle it (only had an ATI Rage II+ onboard). I agree it might be cooling, the onboard temperatures were pretty high. Supposedly they've checked all the components, but I'll call them tomorrow. Didn't hear anything all weekend, though I'm not surprised I didn't.
This will, again, probably be my only post all day. :(

If you do have them add a case fan to the box make sure that it is a good ball bearing one and not the POS low end sleved ones. It makes a huge difference in both sound and airflow (quieter and moves more air) and will last a lot longer. When my K6-450 was having heat issues I solved them by leaving the cover to the case off... made it a little louder, but it was not bad.