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ARGH...!

Super-Slasher

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Messages
222
Location
Ontario, Canada... the frosty north.
For a few weeks I've known the cooling fan on my video card has been going. It's been real noisy, so today I decided to replace it. felt it was as good as day as any to undertake such a task, so I opened my system case, pulled the card out and set out to my "local" computer shop with $30 in my pocket... 20 miles away.

Snowing heavily out, my only transportation available was city buses. The ride was long, hot, and I was falling asleep. I finally get to the shop, only to find out the fans they have as replacements won't find. Additionally, the glue compound holding on the original heatsink to my video card simply would nott let go, even when heated! So, I took the bus back home with the exact same problem.

Finally, after getting frustrated, I simply used plastic tie-straps to fasten a Socket 7 cooling fan to the heatsink. It surprisingly works well, so I jury-rigged it all together and slipped it into my computer, and applied power...

Nothing. Nothing aside from the video card BIOS displaying on the screen. My computer wouldn't boot up, even after turning it on and off dozens of times and with dozens of combinations of cables hooked up into the back. Getting increasingly frustrated, I removed the card, examined it closely... and then slammed it atop of my knee repeatedly before putting it back into the system.

It booted up! I quickly sjut off the power, put the case cover back on and attatched all the cables, and turned it back on...

Nothing. Again.

Two hours of removing cables, cards, case covers and pulling hair, with it booting up sometimes and not all the time, I just keep doodiling with the system until it finally booted up, then connected all cables and covers while it was booting into Windows.

It seems fine, now.

Anyone here have any similar near-hair-pulling experiences with their system? I can't wait until I get my new computer after Christmas... *sigh*
 
Well at least you are getting snow. We are about to get freezing rain! Yuck!

Your story reminded me of when I was having problems with my 386 DX40, many moons ago.
I can't tell you how much time I spent in front of that G$% D$%$% computer reinstalling Windows 3.1 via floppy. Oh that sucked.

I do have a notebook 386 SX20 that has a finnicky floppy drive.
Every once in a while the computer is unable to recognize the drive. I end up having to power down, and place it sidweays on a table, with the floppy part at the bottom. After a little while I put it back on the table right side up, and the drive works again.

Although I have the service manual for this computer, I have never worked on such a small and compact computer, and thus I have never opened it up.

Good luck with your computer. It sounds like if you moved the wrong way, your computer will seize again :)

Chris
 
Yes, I've experienced similar things. Often it helps to remove the graphics card, boot the computer without it and then re-insert it again. It sounds very strange, but more than once I've "cured" a computer in this way.

I also knew a GeForce2MX card which had a bad fan. It was removable, but difficult to find a replacement for. However, some day I dissected an old Pentium system and found one of these smaller Socket 7 fans which to my surprise was a perfect fit, albeit a little fatter than the original GPU fan and required external power. Hooray! Of course, one should try to monitor temperatures to ensure the fan does enough of its job.
 
Vic User,
Working on a laptop isn't that hard. Things are really tight and cramped, but once you see the method the machine was put together, you've got it licked.
The easiest laptop I have ever worked on was a CompuAdd 325NLX. It had to be the most generic thing I have ever seen, and everything was integrated o the motherboard. The *hardest* one I ever worked on was a Compaq LTE sx/20, it had cables wrapped around here and there, and things that you would never think of were related to other distant parts of the machine. But then I figured out the method and had it licked! That Compaq has a tricky floppy, too, the COmpaq. I would have to set it on the table and basically hit it on the side where the floppy was to get it to work.

Nathan
 
Re: ARGH...!

Super-Slasher said:
For a few weeks I've known the cooling fan on my video card has been going. It's been real noisy, so today I decided to replace it. felt it was as good as day as any to undertake such a task, so I opened my system case, pulled the card out and set out to my "local" computer shop with $30 in my pocket... 20 miles away.

nyone here have any similar near-hair-pulling experiences with their system? I can't wait until I get my new computer after Christmas... *sigh*

Funny you should mention that. My "hair puller" was last night. I was doing my normal system maintenance on the Windoze side of my Pavilion. Boot partition defragged fine. Computer started defragging the second partition and failed out! "Odd". I said to myself. I ran scandisk with no errors. Tried defrag again. No dice. Tried scandisk on full. Again, it flaked out. I then tried booting off a floppy and running scandisk. Failed again! TSIA Looked at my start-up procedure by booting to a command prompt. An errant program had my second partition "locked out". Removed the program in the normal fashion. SUCCESS!!! Happiness is a defragged hard drive! RLE
 
Working on a laptop isn't that hard. Things are really tight and cramped, but once you see the method the machine was put together, you've got it licked.
The easiest laptop I have ever worked on was a CompuAdd 325NLX. It had to be the most generic thing I have ever seen, and everything was integrated o the motherboard. The *hardest* one I ever worked on was a Compaq LTE sx/20, it had cables wrapped around here and there, and things that you would never think of were related to other distant parts of the machine. But then I figured out the method and had it licked! That Compaq has a tricky floppy, too, the COmpaq. I would have to set it on the table and basically hit it on the side where the floppy was to get it to work.

Nathan

Hi Nathan;

I see what you mean about taking a look at it and trying to see how it was put together. And like I said, I do have the service manual for it. It's such a sweet little notebook, and I do want to have the floppy become more reliable, since the computer is excellent for writing things wherever I want to, then transfer the files via floppy.

Nice to hear someone else has had to do weird floppy drive things to get it to work. Not that I am happy you had porblems, but you know what I mean.

Chris
 
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