Is it naive to think I can reuse my old hard drive?

JasX

Chomeur wrote: »

What you've got to understand is that I, like so many other people, have become very dependent on having a computer at home. When it stops working, it's a miserable experience. I'm willing to pay good money to get out of the situation.

Me too, however its much more sensible to have a cheap-ish 2nd hand machine or laptop stashed away somewhere for emergencies so you can spend a few days making sure you spend the bulk £££s on your main machine as efficiently as possible

Perhaps a you can find a friend selling an old PC and offer them £50 for it as said spare?

Chomeur wrote: »

Alternatively I could buy a secondhand computer from a friend for £55 (which in fact I'm already using). It has the two required monitor ports but is taller than 34cm. Is it OK to lay computers on their sides?

Oh good, seems you have

Generally yes its fine to operate a PC on its side (motherboard side DOWN), Certainly motherboard, PSU, PCI cards, HDDs processor, fans, RAM will all be fine. optical drives tend to only work if they're the right way up or they start eating disks. Also assumes your PC is in a fairly standard case putting it on its side MD side down won't be blocking a big air vent thats been designed in an unusual place that'd prevent it running on its side).

JasX

Chomeur wrote: »

Obviously Maplins and PC World don't know of such a thing.

Their staff tend not to know much. How old is the shuttle? if you want to put effort into repairing it feel free to post specs and symptoms here and people will help.

If its more than 3-5 years old you could think about a new machine -but really depends on what you use it for (for email and normal browsing what you have will likely be fine, for demanding editing and games I'd opt for a new one)

adouglasmhor

One other option is to buy a cheapo power supply and case that takes midi and mini ATX components and rebuild in that another is http://www.ebuyer.com/product/222816 if your processor fits

Avoid PCW like the plague their salespeople are salespeople not IT people.

Chomeur

JasX wrote: »

Their staff tend not to know much. How old is the shuttle? if you want to put effort into repairing it feel free to post specs and symptoms here and people will help.

If its more than 3-5 years old you could think about a new machine -but really depends on what you use it for (for email and normal browsing what you have will likely be fine, for demanding editing and games I'd opt for a new one)

It's 5-6 years old. It has been good to be honest, apart from the problems now. I don't think I want to repair it - it will be too much trouble.

Is there a computer store you'd recommend where the staff do know much? I went into Dixons (or whatever it's been rebranded as) yesterday and the first salesman I spoke to had never come across the idea of using two screens side by side before. He thought I just wanted to duplicate the image.

adouglasmhor

If you let us know roughy where you are, eg. East Midlands, Yorkshire, Scotland etc. someone may know a good local place. Eg. for Glasgow I would say Priceless and that the Tradeston branch were bigger than the Finnieston one so more staff with a bigger pool of knowledge. (They are all pretty helpfull).

Chomeur

adouglasmhor wrote: »

If you let us know roughy where you are, eg. East Midlands, Yorkshire, Scotland etc. someone may know a good local place. Eg. for Glasgow I would say Priceless and that the Tradeston branch were bigger than the Finnieston one so more staff with a bigger pool of knowledge. (They are all pretty helpfull).

Camden, London.

gonzo127

ok although this is heading in a slightly different direction from your original question i am just wondering if you have managed to get all your information off your old system?

if not i would probably suggest the linux livecd route since you have been struggling with getting your laptop to recognise your old hard drive in the caddy.

so basically

download one of the ubuntu's, linux mint's or puppy linux
follow instructions to 'burn' it to a disk or usb stick
pop old hard drive back into old computer and change boot priorities in the bios to boot from cd/dvd drive or usb port first (dependant on how you have burnt off the ISO - please note not all older systems will be able to boot from a USB drive)
pop cd or usb stick into shuttle
boot up and it should come up with the option to 'try' the relevant os - choose try and it will boot up the entire operating system and run it from the disk and your systems ram making no changes to your hard drive
once booted up (can take a few mins due to it having to constantly check the disk and buffer the information in the ram) you should be able to see your hard drive (dependant on the OS of choice will change exactly where you will find it but they are all pretty easy to get around)
once you have found your hard drive you should then be able to access your files to be able to back them up

i know a lot of shoulds in there but as with anything computer based there are no guarantees (well other than PC world etc ripping you off and not knowing their arris from their elbow)

JasX

Chomeur wrote: »

Is there a computer store you'd recommend where the staff do know much? I went into Dixons (or whatever it's been rebranded as) yesterday and the first salesman I spoke to had never come across the idea of using two screens side by side before. He thought I just wanted to duplicate the image.

Depends what you want? will you need it for anything more demanding than web browsing, email and office type stuff (eg modern demanding games or serious video editing)?

Do you have a particular budget in mind?

Any other hard constraints.... eg your height restriction? or would you be prepared to modify the shelf/set it somewhere else/buy a new desk if something really good came along? Do you own a pair of screens already or are looking for them too? do you want a desktop or would a laptop you could open and dual screen with the laptops main display + 1 screen extending the desktop (what I do most of the time)

asbokid

Chomeur wrote: »

It's 5-6 years old. It has been good to be honest, apart from the problems now. I don't think I want to repair it - it will be too much trouble.

Is there a computer store you'd recommend where the staff do know much? I went into Dixons (or whatever it's been rebranded as) yesterday and the first salesman I spoke to had never come across the idea of using two screens side by side before. He thought I just wanted to duplicate the image.

If you want dual screen, or even quad screen, Matrox are the name in video cards. I bought a G550 card for £10 some years ago. Why do you need dual screen? The gents' club next door had banks of screens driven by Matrox cards, just in case the punters at the back couldn't see!

Chomeur

I have a desk with wireless keyboard and mouse and the two screens which I own. I have shelves about two feet away, to my left, with power sockets, printers, speakers, modem and the computer which I'm using now which is an old laptop. I want to keep the number of wires going between the desk and the shelves to the minimum. No wires at all would be fantastic but I don't believe I can avoid having power and computer leads for the screens. The only way I could change the shelf height would be to remove one of the shelves and I wouldn't be very keen to do this.

So I think the new computer ought to be on the shelves otherwise the wires will be horrendous. I could get a small PC or I suppose I could get a laptop with a good screen and use that screen instead of what is currently my second screen and just not have my two screens next to each other. That would obviously have the advantage of portability, and, as I say, my existing laptop is rather old.

I use the computer for Internet and office applications, but also Microsoft Visual Studio for some coding. This last application seems to require a lot of memory. I also use it for watching some programmes on BBC iPlayer and I use Google Earth quite a bit. No gaming or video editing.

I was thinking of spending £4-500.