Vanity - Question about my now deceased home computer

02.17.09 | Perdogg

[Perdogg]

I download some music this morning and when I removed my USB connector to my Sony MP3 player my computer went dead. I tried a hard boot, but the computer is not booting up.

I am assuming that "she's dead, jim", right? The fan won't start and my zip drive has conniption fits when I start try to start her up. My CD rom won't open either.

Is there any way I can recover the contents of my hard drive? How do I dispose of the computer and get rid of the personal information.

Is this a good computer?

[bcsco]

How do I get a computer without Vista?? Macs are too expensive.

Dell online still has them available with XP...

[RSmithOpt]

Agree......newer ATX 2.0 power supplies will not supply voltage to the mombo if voltages are not stable to other peripherals. Built in safety feature to keep from smokin’ te mombo.

[AppyPappy]

Here’s the same computer for the same price with more RAM and a bigger hard drive

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4395999&CatId=2658

I would go for something better than 6100 graphics if you could. Radeon 3xxx or ATI 70xx graphics will enable you to do home theatre if you ever decide to do it.

[djf]

Probably.

About once a year I disconnect the box, take the cover off, take it on the porch, and approach it - very slowly.

With my Briggs & Stratton blower.

Plug it back in, power it up, verify that all the cards and connectors are seated good, and get back online!

[Ditter]

Interesting I would not have thought of using my blower but I did put my keyboard in the dishwasher one time. The keys had gotten where they stuck a little and washing in the dishwasher fixed it right up.

[tgusa]

Good question. I think Dell still offers laptops with XP if you specifically request it. You should also be able to locate a LICENSED copy of XP on eBay - read the description carefully though. I’m toying with switching over to Linux but it’s a bear to learn - have yet to locate a really good learning tool for Ubuntu, which I have on an older hard drive. Macs are great if you’re independently wealthy which I most definitely am not.

[AppyPappy]

I would be afraid I was pushing the dust into the fins of the CPU heatsink. I use a vacuum.

Here’s an example of what I meant by graphics

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4355333&CatId=2658

This has a Radeon 3200 graphics processor built in. I was able to play some pretty stout games on this GPU (at low levels) on my kids computer. It should be able to do home theater if you ever decide to go that route.

[Malsua]

Will XP support Office 2007?

Yes.

As others have said, it sounds like your current power supply has left for greener pastures. It's quite possible one or the other voltages(12v/5v)has failed in the supply. This allows some signs of life yet the machine won't start. It probably is time to get a new computer though.

[Katya]

some pc’s won’t start up if the fan isn’t working. if you have pets in the house, or some hair has gotten caught with the dust on the fan blades they may not be turning. try cleaning it out first.

[djf]

Good price.

Never used an Acer box, though. Most of my stuff is Asus, Gateway, or Toshiba.

Always had very good luck with the Asus stuff.

[CholeraJoe]

It sounds like you fried the mother board...and the father board, too.

[AppyPappy]

I dunno. I build all my computers from scratch.

[TalonDJ]

The power to the computer is fine. The green light on the back of my computer comes on then goes off.

The power supply inside the machine could still be dead. They are relatively easy to replace.

[djf]

I do for the desktops. Not the laptops.

[silverleaf]

blue screen of death ping

[DuncanWaring]

And also use it to backup the primary drive.

I suspect that since it's six or seven years old it's too small to be useful for any significant backup capability.

[listenhillary]

A Neal Boortz advertiser.

Vision computers has 4 systems with various price points that ship with XP.

Includes a 3 year warranty. What is strange is they don’t include a DVD-RW. A new DVD-RW writer costs about $20.00 and is an easy install.

http://www.visioncomputers.com/items.asp?cc=WEB-DESKTOPS&fil=285:54

[Proud_texan]

Excellent point and large drives are certainly inexpensive but still my cheap, uh, frugal side hates to see a good drive just sit there so for critical files like docs, Quicken data files, system state, etc. a small drive can still be of some benefit.

[RSmithOpt]

Pinging Mr. Gates....Pinging Mr. Gates....

[dangus]

The systems requirements for Vista to work well were far beyond the minimum published requirements; Microsoft was just antsy to get everyone off of XP and force them into paying for Vista. That the requirements were so high were totally outlandish, and many people upgraded to Vista on machines which totally should have remained XP machines. Even many machines which were sold new did not really meet Vista’s requirements.

That said, if you buy a new machine with Vista preloaded, and it has the power to support it (2 GB RAM, a couple hundred GB disk space, 4 GHz processor), Vista works great and has some pretty kick-ass features.

Of course, if you’re one of the people trying to run a Vista upgrade on their old XP machine, that’s sorta like saying, “Aside from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”