Windows wont load and pc closes down after taking it to shop

Lady_K

Just thought I would come back to this thread to tell you after all this time this pc is working smoothly, no blue screens, no restarts no overheating!

I always felt niggled by this because of the way it happened, after it just being a noisy fan and taking it into the shop and it coming back with all these problems and after 2nd visit to same shop then another visit to a different shop it was written off saying the hardrive was knackered.

I never bought a new computer, just used it putting up with the blue screens and restarts and had to have one whole side off of the tower for it to come off at all.

Then a couple of weeks ago someone gave me an old pc, it is very old and only had 256 mb ram a 19mb hardrive and 1.5 processor. I was reluctant to spend money on it because its so old but then I thought I would check if the ram from the faulty pc would fit, it did and I found out the faulty pc had 2 hardrives which I

Lady_K

Just thought I would come back to this thread to tell you that after all this time this pc is working smoothly, no blue screens, no restarts no overheating!

I always felt niggled by this because of the way it happened, after it just being a noisy fan and taking it into the shop for a new one and it coming back with all these problems. Then after 2nd visit to same shop and another visit to a different shop it was written off saying the motherboard was knackered.

I never bought a new computer as I couldnt afford it I just used it putting up with the blue screens and restarts and had to have one whole side off of the tower for it to work at all.

Then a couple of weeks ago someone gave me an old pc, it is very old and only had 256 mb ram, a 19mb hardrive and a 1.5 processor. I was reluctant to spend money on it because its so old but then I thought I would check if the ram from the faulty pc would fit, it did and I found out the faulty pc had 2 hardrives which I had never known it had 2 so I then took one of them out to put it in the pc that was ok. Then I swapped the graphics card round but I put all the older stuff into the faulty pc planning to keep it for emergencys as it would be ok even if it restarted just for that. Then I realised the faulty pc was staying on! I left it on all day and for hours at a time for a week, I've done alsorts on it and it seems not to be faulty at all now.

After using the pc someone gave me for a week I decided as the other one is now working again perfectly fine I would buy some ram after all (it was much cheaper on play.com) as it was worth it to get the lower processor one a bit faster and put the other back into the previously faulty machine.

I don't know why it started running ok but I'm not happy that the 2nd shop I took it to told me the hardrive was totally gone. I could have chucked it out but didnt.

I now have 2 working although older pcs which is good because I will always have a back up. My grandchildren will be happy though too because there will aways be one spare

How can a shop tell me the motherboard is knackered when it couldn't have been at all?

fwor

Lady_K wrote: »

How can a shop tell me the hardrive is knackered when it couldn't have been at all?

Probably because it's easy for them to say, and hard for you to refute. And their "solution" needs no great effort on their part - plus they get to pocket a nice mark-up on the replacement HDD.

Having said that, I've seen a HDD go faulty in a way that would permit it to pass the manufacturer's diagnostic tests any number of times, but still not work reliably for more than a few days...

IMO it's good to be able to keep older kit working usefully and not in landfill, but it's probably wise to keep to a minimum any data that you really care about on the HDD, and back up whatever you do keep there on a regular basis.

Lady_K

Lady_K wrote: »

How can a shop tell me the motherboard is knackered when it couldn't have been at all?

Sorry I meant motherboard they told me the motherboard was gone (edited my posts now)

It just makes me mad that I paid them to wrongly diagnose a problem which could have led me to getting rid of the machine completely when now its working perfectly fine. I took it there because I thought they would finaly give me a proper diagnosis after the experience at the first shop. Perhaps they just couldnt be bothered or didn't have the expertise to find out what was wrong. He then tried to sell me a reconditioned machine at lower spec than the one I had taken in at a really stupid price.

I did think of popping in when I'm going by to tell them I'm still using the pc they told me was no good at all and the motherboard was gone when I took it in for repair. They did charge me even though it was deemed unrepairable.