[kwlug-disc] Troubleshooting and Fixing a PC locally?

[unsolicited]

Khalid Baheyeldin wrote, On 12/02/2010 11:15 PM:
> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 10:45 PM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca 
> <mailto:unsolicited at swiz.ca>> wrote:
> 
>     Khalid Baheyeldin wrote, On 12/02/2010 5:28 PM:
> 
> And it does not reach the stage where it attempts to read media (CD or 
> disk) most of the time. Just hangs in the BIOS saying scanning for USB 
> devices. The one time it booted (when I carried it upstairs), it did go 
> to the disk and loaded, and then locked up after I was running some 
> Linux commands.

Good, so you can take Linux off the table.

Having 2 means not putting BOTH of them in mission critical roles! (-:

You have no USB devices connected at the time, right? Including 
keyboard / mouse? [I've see a mouse, or was it a keyboard?, cause this 
sort of thing.] Perhaps ease up on the morning coffee, or at least 
keep it away from the keyboard?

KVM can be good, but for this sort of thing (pieces scattered all 
about), and usually having a computer I don't need to see the screen 
on for a while (vnc useful here), a simple video extension cable has 
served me well. I just snake it on the current monitor setup over to 
the box under test. [I do the same thing with PS too, putting the 
cases side by each.]

> So I'd rather hire a pro. And I got some pointers from people on this list.

Fair enough. Although you can run memtest overnight and decide in the 
morning.

Considering the costs you are about to incur, and that you may never 
trust the hardware again ... there are advantages to not bothering 
(with paying someone), and just buying another box and slipping the 
hard drives into it.

	Diagnosing it some other time. Similarly, there are advantages to 
buying a replacement that uses the same CPUs / memory - this current 
box could supply you with spare parts for the next. And if you bought 
extra memory for this one, it can just go into the new one instead of 
buying extra again. Or just swap motherboards and get on with your day.