Just get a Mac for crying out loud
Well, I'm the lone Mac in my office, and everything else hanging around is a Dell product with Windows XP SP2.
Today, my secretary was working when her Dell spontaneously shut off. Not shut down, not blue screen of death, no "Windows needs to shut down," just a stone cold, power off.
Hmm. That's weird, so restart, which it does back to the main Windows screen, same thing in just a few seconds.
Any of you PC types have any idea what could be going on here? I'm thinking it's likely a hardware failure of some sort, possibly a power supply. But, then again, I know just enough to be dangerous around children and animals.
BTW, I told the attorney I work with that he should replace it with a Mac and he looked at me like I was crazy. Oh well. Live and learn. Die and forget it all.
Power Supply. Check vents - air flow - buy a new one.
Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot | Aug 30, 2007 4:42:19 PM
Problem apparently solved. Seems that some plastic piece holding the heat sink fan had broken loose, causing the overheating and spontaneous shut downs.
Posted by: Jay Johnson | Aug 30, 2007 4:57:43 PM
That will do it. Big problem on the small HP desktops too. Cheap plastic holding down the processor fan.
Posted by: buzz | Aug 30, 2007 6:03:04 PM
I have an old PC from 2001 and my heat fan is too weak to keep it from overheating and freezing up. When I use it, I have to rest it on a bag of frozen veggies or something. Otherwise it works just fine -- I'm just too cheap to sink any more money into such an old laptop.
Posted by: Andrew | Aug 30, 2007 8:40:58 PM
I agree - it's the power supply. I had the same issue, and i thought something was drastically wrong with my computer, but I replaced the power supply and it was all good.
Posted by: LL | Aug 30, 2007 10:10:44 PM
On Dells do an F5/F8 at bootup and send it into DOS. Then do a CHKDSK /R to fix any system error.
Posted by: Jim N Toni | Aug 31, 2007 12:20:11 AM
It sounds more like a heat problem than a power supply one, when power supplies fail they tend to not start at ALL. When its a heat problem this is exactly what will happen, the system will shutdown to prevent damage to the motherboard and processor.
Posted by: David K. | Aug 31, 2007 6:08:56 AM
Heat. I bored a hole in the laptop case below the processor and constantly had a fan blowing on it from underneath or it would shut off.
Posted by: | Aug 31, 2007 8:41:35 AM
It was a heat issue--see my comment above.
Posted by: Jay Johnson | Aug 31, 2007 10:29:16 AM
Off topic, but terrorists tried to shoot down a military aircraft carrying three U.S. Senators and a Congressman as it was leaving the airport in Baghdad. Senator Inhofe gave a classic response...
"Sen. James M. Inhofe says terrorists' attempt to shoot down the C-130 military transport plane carrying him and other lawmakers in Iraq demonstrated the progress of the U.S. military campaign."
...Forgive me if I am wrong, but were the Japanese and Germans trying to shoot down American aircraft as they left Tokyo and Berlin in 1950? The idea that this is "progress" 4 1/2 years after "Mission Accomplished" is laughable.
Posted by: Mad Max, Esquire | Aug 31, 2007 11:50:03 AM
Mad Max - interesting you should raise the concept ... if various groups had had the technology, you can bet they would have been trying to do so ... the fact that they didn't doesn't detract from the historical facts that they tried with what they had access to in post-WWII Germany ...
"However, historian Alexander Perry Biddiscombe, who has made a study of the subject, takes a different view. In his Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946 (1998)[3] he states that after retreating to the Black Forest and the Harz mountains, the Werwolf continued resisting the occupation until at least 1947, possibly to 1949-50, effectively undermining the post-war peace and stability." - {my emphasis}
Posted by: Alasdair | Aug 31, 2007 2:45:06 PM
"Werwolf violence failed to mobilize a spirit of national resistance. Biddiscombe argues that the group was poorly led, armed, and organized, and that it was doomed to failure given the war-weariness of the population and the hesitancy of youth to sacrifice themselves on the funeral pyre of the regime."
Alasdair - so in other words, no, this kind of thing wasn't going on in 1950 Germany.
Posted by: Mad Max, Esquire | Aug 31, 2007 3:04:58 PM
So having the Mac OS installed would have somehow prevented the computer from overheating when the fan stopped?
Posted by: Matt | Aug 31, 2007 3:12:21 PM
Mad Max - and where is the "spirit of national resistance" in Iraq ?
There are thugs and terrorists in Iraq - stipulated ... a "national resistance" ? Not even close, not even in the D-List's soggiest dreams ...
{when they are trying to rain on the President's and Petraeus's parade - what else did you think I meant ?}
Posted by: Alasdair | Aug 31, 2007 10:36:07 PM