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Help me figure out what's wrong with the desktop please?
aliasojo
Posts: 23,053 Forumite
in Techie Stuff
Had a big run of bad luck over the last fortnight and 2 desktops and a laptop have all gone on the blink.
One of the desktops was working okay but I connected an extra monitor to it and very soon after I smelled burning and then it switched off.
I disconnected the extra monitor and tried switching it on again. There is a short second or two lag after switching on, before anything happens and then you can hear the fans starting up but that's it. The hard drive light blinks on and off, there is a clicking type sound for a few seconds, then all goes quiet and it goes dead.
I took the psu out of the other desktop and swapped them over but it didn't help, I also took the graphics card out and swapped them too but that did nothing either.
The hard drive itself is fine, I took it out and put it in an external dock and it works perfectly.
Any ideas? The desktop I took the parts from is also faulty so I dont know if the graphics card and the psu were even ok or not tbh. I was clutching at straws when I tried them.
I'm happy to take things to bits and mess around but I'm not happy about shelling out for new parts on a 'see if that works' basis especially since I dont know much about computers and it's all a learning curve, so any thoughts would be welcome.
There's no sign internally of anything burnt out btw.
One of the desktops was working okay but I connected an extra monitor to it and very soon after I smelled burning and then it switched off.
I disconnected the extra monitor and tried switching it on again. There is a short second or two lag after switching on, before anything happens and then you can hear the fans starting up but that's it. The hard drive light blinks on and off, there is a clicking type sound for a few seconds, then all goes quiet and it goes dead.
I took the psu out of the other desktop and swapped them over but it didn't help, I also took the graphics card out and swapped them too but that did nothing either.
The hard drive itself is fine, I took it out and put it in an external dock and it works perfectly.
Any ideas? The desktop I took the parts from is also faulty so I dont know if the graphics card and the psu were even ok or not tbh. I was clutching at straws when I tried them.
I'm happy to take things to bits and mess around but I'm not happy about shelling out for new parts on a 'see if that works' basis especially since I dont know much about computers and it's all a learning curve, so any thoughts would be welcome.
There's no sign internally of anything burnt out btw.
Herman - MP for all! 
0
Comments
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Where was the burning smell coming from, the monitor or the PC?0
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The PC.
(Sorry for delay in replying. My bb connection is very erratic at the moment with BT blaming Pipex and Pipex blaming BT.)Herman - MP for all!
0 -
Chances are the graphics card was loose and when you connected the cable, it moved slightly and shorted out on the card next to it.0
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