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My PC is being odd.


Gibber
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Did you use the same power lead for the new PSU as the old one ?

 

 

Its just once I saw a PC whose power lead was rather cheap and tacky, and instead of spring type contacts in the kettle plug end it had solid ones, and the connection wasn't always perfect, if you banged anything nearby the PC would occasionally lose power for a moment.

 

 

Just replaced my own PSU as it turns out, after my old one died with a very loud bang and room lighting sparks out of the back of it. (Antec nearly 3 years old model..) Replaced with a cheap Maplins 480w Xpower GTX light PSU at £25, seems ok though the leads on it are really short!

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Did you use the same power lead for the new PSU as the old one ?

 

 

Its just once I saw a PC whose power lead was rather cheap and tacky, and instead of spring type contacts in the kettle plug end it had solid ones, and the connection wasn't always perfect, if you banged anything nearby the PC would occasionally lose power for a moment.

 

 

 

I had bother with my PC locking up randomly. The eventual solution was to make sure the power lead was firmly inserted in socket in the PSU.

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550. I've had it about 3 years, previous version of this.

 

I had one of those cheap 550w Chinese jobs, it lasted about 6 months then started working intermittently, caused all sorts of problems. and I found out this was common with them, so, Spend a bit extra on a quality power supply, something like an OCZ 600w, thats what i'm running now and its been faultless for over a year.

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^^^^ What kind of problems do you actually get caused by a (slightly) dodgy power supply?

 

I've kind of suspected mine in the past, mainly because so many people say that's the first thing to look at. I have had some problems with my one crashing, most recently it was crashing on trying to open some applications. Reseating the graphics card seemed to sort it for now anyway.

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^^^^ What kind of problems do you actually get caused by a (slightly) dodgy power supply?

 

I've kind of suspected mine in the past, mainly because so many people say that's the first thing to look at. I have had some problems with my one crashing, most recently it was crashing on trying to open some applications. Reseating the graphics card seemed to sort it for now anyway.

 

Could be, could be a software problem also. Although if the app you are opening up needs a lot of processor power then an insufficient power supply might run out of juice and crash the PC.

 

This sums up what I think was happening with my PC

 

if it is the pc power supply playing up that would cause the pc to lock up and therefore never tell the monitor to wake back up again, hence the need to reset

 

What confused me was the PC stayed powered up immediately after the PSU had one of its intermittent failures and the monitor was off leading me to think the problem was the video card drivers, then the video card, then the AGP slot and then the monitor. It wasn't a video issue after all, these things were fine and all it needed was a £15 replacement PSU.

 

As Pooks said, one of these could help

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132489/show_product_reviews

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  • 1 month later...

A couple of observations from someone who's been using a soldering iron almost longer than a knife and fork:

 

Whenever a problem appears following a bang on or near the case, it's a tenner to a penny that it's being caused by an intermittent connection momentarily making or breaking a circuit somewhere inside, or where a cable plugs in. Given the speed of a modern PC, even a one millisecond glitch might corrupt several million instructions or bytes of data, so a repeatable problem almost seems like a Godsend, given that almost anything is possible.

 

Traditionally, a dodgy connection would have been a "scratchy" switch or connector, but things have got more complicated since our overlords decreed that consumer electronics may use only lead-free solder.

 

Proper "60/40" tin/lead solder works, and works well. The new stuff is a nightmare. It doesn't "wet" the surfaces as well as leaded solder, so that even a joint which looks OK may be duff. (And, in fact, even a good joint looks "dry" by traditional soldering standards, which doesn't help.) If it does make a good joint initially, it is nevertheless prone to "unmake" it at some arbitrary point afterwards. And as if that wasn't enough, when you leave near-pure tin for a few years, it grows tiny "whiskers" which can short across to the next joint - probably blowing something up, and also vaporising the whisker so as to make diagnosos impossible - for more detail, google on "tin whiskers" (with or without quotes).

 

Everything (electronic) you buy is now made using this stuff. Expect strange intermittent faults and inexplicable failures to become the norm. That's the bad news. The good news is that your kids can now eat their Playstations without getting lead poisoning.

 

This is called "progress".

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Doesn't really merit a new thread, but my laptop is behaving oddly. Everything works in both USB ports with the exception of the mouse (and I've tried others including one I have recently purchased). :? Is there something obvious I could be missing? It makes work a little cumbersome when I have to use the inbuilt mouse.

I've followed the troubleshooter through to its conclusion with no results

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Is this a wired or wireless mouse? If it's the later you may need to press a connect button on mouse and receiver. Failing all else - have someone come look over your shoulder as you try and show them how it's not working. That usually makes any bit of kit immediately start working again :wink:

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