PC Problems

[ncpierce]

Hi,

Just bought a new Dell which is great. Am sorting out my old PC to pass on to my Sister for my nieces to use.

I whipped the cover off today and hoovered all of the fluff out. Also took of the Processor fan to clean the crap from that and the heat sink. Put the fan back in, plugged it back in (or so I thought ). Rebooted that machine and after a while got some fun beeping noises switched the machine off straight away.

Looking at the Foxconn site - its a Foxconn 915A03 P 8LRS motherboard - the beep codes seem to relate to CPU overheating. Now I have reseated the fan, plugged it back in and the machine runs - well all of the cooling fans do, the hard drive whires, the CD-Rom drives will open but the keyboard and mouse do not work and the screen does not do anything which leads me to think that I may have buggered up the motherboard and/or processor comfort).

Has anyone got an ideas which might help. I am not sure what other damage I might have done.

Thanks

Nigel

 

[Miz]

Did you wear an anti-static wrist band when cleaning out the pc?


Could be the static from the vac has caused some problems, but re-check that everything is plugged in correctly, make sure you have not swapped the mouse and keyboard plugs over.

 

[cookie]

have you plugged the cpu fan back into the correct cpu fan power point?

did you clean the processor and heatsink mating surfaces and apply new heat sink compound?

 

[GSwadd]

have you plugged the cpu fan back into the correct cpu fan power point?

did you clean the processor and heatsink mating surfaces and apply new heat sink compound?

If you removed the fan you will need to apply more thermal paste to the mating surfaces as cookie mentioned else the thermal conductivity between cpu and heatsink will not be adequate. Depending what speed chip you have installed they can overheat within the booting process if not cooled correctly, although unlikely with the new core2duo's. If you only took the fan off the top of the heatsink all should be ok a nd you maybe jiggled something you should not have. Just remove all cards, ram, etc and reseat them and try again.

Just noticed that board supports older P4 chips only so heat could be very much a problem in booting - 8-10 seconds is long enough to fry the chip although it should shutdown before that.

 

[ncpierce]

If you removed the fan you will need to apply more thermal paste to the mating surfaces as cookie mentioned else the thermal conductivity between cpu and heatsink will not be adequate. Depending what speed chip you have installed they can overheat within the booting process if not cooled correctly, although unlikely with the new core2duo's. If you only took the fan off the top of the heatsink all should be ok a nd you maybe jiggled something you should not have. Just remove all cards, ram, etc and reseat them and try again.

Just noticed that board supports older P4 chips only so heat could be very much a problem in booting - 8-10 seconds is long enough to fry the chip although it should shutdown before that.

Have ordered some thermal paste as I removed the heatsink from the chip. I will give it a go and see what happens.

Thanks

Nigel

 

[Dickieboy]

Make sure you've put it back on the right way around they sometimes have a lip on the bottom face, I know because I found out the hard way

 

[ncpierce]

Have ordered some thermal paste as I removed the heatsink from the chip. I will give it a go and see what happens.

Thanks

Nigel

OK remounted the processor and heatsink and it still does not work. No beeps from the motherboard but everything else seems to be running. I am guessing it is new processor time!?!? - can anyone recommend someone in Surrey/South London who could fit a processor for me to save me bricking it again?

If I were to get a barebones machine can I just swap in my existing hard drive and other "cards" and drives and expect it to work or is it reinstall time?

Thanks

Nigel

 

[POG]

I whipped the cover off today and hoovered all of the fluff out.

If you used a hoover (the type that plug into the wall), you will have fried the processor and/or motherboard. Mains vacuum cleaner produce large amounts of static which is a big no-no

The only type of vacuums that you can use are the battery / rechargeable ones which don't produce static. You're better of using a can of compressed air which costs pennies out of Maplins or the like.

 

[ncpierce]

I whipped the cover off today and hoovered all of the fluff out.

I did not hoover the entire machine out. I only hoovered the inlet vents on the case and the heatsink once it was removed from the machine.

I now think that it is probably new Motherboard and processor time.