PC repair in the city.

Ericaa

Hey guys,

Does anyone have any recommendations for who or where to go to to get a PC repaired?
It's most likely a motherboard or power supply issue. Any good or bad experiences with the shops in town?

Thanks!

The guy on manor street is okay.


What is the issue with the PC? I can offer some advice if you give a bit of details on what is wrong.

Ericaa

Deleted User wrote: »

The guy on manor street is okay.


What is the issue with the PC? I can offer some advice if you give a bit of details on what is wrong.

Cool thank you.

Honestly I don't have much to tell you. It won't turn on. Before it died completely, it was getting harder and harder to get it to turn on.
Now, if you plug it in, it's like power gets to it for a second but it still won't turn on.
The only other info I can give you is that it's one of those mini HP towers from like 7 years ago.

Thanks again!

Wanderer78

Ericaa wrote:

Honestly I don't have much to tell you. It won't turn on. Before it died completely, it was getting harder and harder to get it to turn on. Now, if you plug it in, it's like power gets to it for a second but it still won't turn on. The only other info I can give you is that it's one of those mini HP towers from like 7 years ago.

Power supply issue. Probably needs new one but at 7 years old, you may need to consider new pc

Esel

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Power supply issue. Probably needs new one but at 7 years old, you may need to consider new pc

Price of PSU versus new PC, not counting data situation?

Could even be a faulty power button, or just a loose connection inside.

Plug it out (from main electricity supply). Open the case (don't strain all the wires going in). Might be a lot of dust etc in there. Vacuum.


tl/dr Bring it to a/the shop.

Hope you have your data backed up!

alta stare

OP I wouldn't write it off yet. There are a few things which could be the issue.

1 power supply is toast

2 RAM is toast (can prevent start up)

3 power button is not making enough contact (unlikely tho)

4 motherboard is fried

5 harddrive could be toast (from description given I don't think that is the issue.)

All of these are hard to diagnose without actually inspecting the tower. As for your data on the harddrive that will be retrievable irrespective of whether the tower will turn in or not so the backup comment should not be something to worry about.

I can't help regarding who you could bring it too as I usually do my own but at my own risk sometimes with bad results

Hijpo

When you say harder and harder to turn on, what do you mean?
It takes ages to boot or it takes several presses of the power button before something happens?

jimmyw

My laptop just committed suicide (the pig :P) where I switched it on battery and there was a blue screen and it wouldn't turn off, so I had to remove the battery cause there was no other way to turn it off.It wouldn't switch on again even on mains power.

Though to be fair, I bought it in 2010 for 500 quid with an added warranty that expired in 2015.I was thinking about trying a repair, but I then changed my mind and bought a more basic new one for 324 euro and warranty.

My, they have changed as its way lighter without the DVD drive and a smaller screen, but its fine.Are they worth trying to repair them in any circumstance?

alta stare

Yeah some would be worth a repair. What you describe on your one sounds like Blue Screen of Death. A known issue for Windows which is fixable. My young lads laptop got really slow running Windows 8 and then Windows 10 so I just installed Linux on it and its working fine. He had pretty much written it off and not used it anymore because it had gone so slow. Even old laptops/PCs can be saved with lightweight Linux.

jimmyw

alta stare wrote: »

Yeah some would be worth a repair. What you describe on your one sounds like Blue Screen of Death. A known issue for Windows which is fixable. My young lads laptop got really slow running Windows 8 and then Windows 10 so I just installed Linux on it and its working fine. He had pretty much written it off and not used it anymore because it had gone so slow. Even old laptops/PCs can be saved with lightweight Linux.

It used to have win 7 and I updated to 10 there a while back.Though yours can be turned on.

How does that linux thingy work? Is it just an installation of another hard drive or something?.....Sorry about the ignorance:o, and how much does it cost out of interest?

Esel

jimmyw wrote: »

It used to have win 7 and I updated to 10 there a while back.Though yours can be turned on.

How does that linux thingy work? Is it just an installation of another hard drive or something?.....Sorry about the ignorance:o, and how much does it cost out of interest?

Linux is an Operating System; it is a flavour of Unix. You replace Windows with it, or install it side by side with Windows (ID you do this, you will have an option to load either OS at boot).

You can also boot Linux from a CD or memory stick.

It is free.

Wanderer78

any recommendations of what version of linux? really should be messing around with it at this stage but out of sheer laziness, i havent.

Esel

Wanderer78 wrote: »

any recommendations of what version of linux? really should be messing around with it at this stage but out of sheer laziness, i havent.

No direct experience, sorry.

Do a search here - you should find relevant info/links.

Ericaa

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Power supply issue. Probably needs new one but at 7 years old, you may need to consider new pc

That's a last resort hopefully! We want a gaming PC at some stage but if this turns out to be a relatively inexpensive fix then happy days.

Esel wrote: »

Price of PSU versus new PC, not counting data situation?

Could even be a faulty power button, or just a loose connection inside.

Plug it out (from main electricity supply). Open the case (don't strain all the wires going in). Might be a lot of dust etc in there. Vacuum.


tl/dr Bring it to a/the shop.

Hope you have your data backed up!

Thanks for the suggestions!
The PC was regularly(ish) cleaned out inside so I'm not expecting that to be the issue but it's always worth checking again.
Don't actually know how much of the data was backed up, but since the damn thing died over a year ago, I'm assuming most of it wasn't too important :P

alta stare wrote: »

OP I wouldn't write it off yet. There are a few things which could be the issue.

1 power supply is toast

2 RAM is toast (can prevent start up)

3 power button is not making enough contact (unlikely tho)

4 motherboard is fried

5 harddrive could be toast (from description given I don't think that is the issue.)

All of these are hard to diagnose without actually inspecting the tower. As for your data on the harddrive that will be retrievable irrespective of whether the tower will turn in or not so the backup comment should not be something to worry about.

I can't help regarding who you could bring it too as I usually do my own but at my own risk sometimes with bad results

Thanks for the input.
It's a pity we don't have a second tower to at least try rule out some of the possibilities.
As for data, I'm not too worried about that anyway

Hijpo wrote: »

When you say harder and harder to turn on, what do you mean?
It takes ages to boot or it takes several presses of the power button before something happens?

Several presses of the power button.

Esel

Plug it out from the mains electricity supply.

Open it up (either a pull tab, a screw on the rear, or press tabs - then lift or slide the lid off). The PSU will be right where the mains lead enters. Wires go from this to various components e.g. hard disk, CD drive, motherboard etc. Disconnect and reconnect these. Try to boot again (reconnect mains first).

No joy or same issue? Unplug mains. Look at the hard disk. There is a wide flat cable that connects to the motherboard. Gently disconnect and reconnect both ends. Try boot again.

Before all that, though, look at the inside of the power button and do the same for its connections. Everything is modular; fairly easy to see what's what.

If you don't want to try yourself, maybe a friend could help?

Otherwise, repair shop.

Taking ages to boot - it would probably benefit from some software housekeeping - virus scan, disk defragmentation etc.

Ericaa

Most of that has been tried before, but wil take a look over them again.
There wasn't any problems with boot time, it was looked after in that regard anyway!
Thanks for the suggestions

alta stare

jimmyw wrote: »

It used to have win 7 and I updated to 10 there a while back.Though yours can be turned on.

How does that linux thingy work? Is it just an installation of another hard drive or something?.....Sorry about the ignorance:o, and how much does it cost out of interest?

Ah the Windows 10 Blue Screen. Yeah I know a few people had that problem. It is a well known problem which a recent update from Microsoft created. I would suggest to anybody with Windows 7 to stay with it for as long as possible. I think support ends in 2019 or something like that.

As for Linux, there are loads of flavours some easy to use some hard. I would suggest Mint Cinnamon as it has a similar layout to Windows and is very easy to use. It would be along with Ubuntu the most popular form of Linux. Both have long time support which is also handy.

Installing it can be done either by disc or USB. It is relatively straightforward. It can be installed over Windows or alongside for dual boot purposes. You could also install in Windows via Virtualbox.

alta stare

Wanderer78 wrote: »

any recommendations of what version of linux? really should be messing around with it at this stage but out of sheer laziness, i havent.

For a normal pc user Mint Cinnamon or Ubuntu is recommend as it has a friendly user interface. Try one of those first then try others and you will get a feel for it.

Wanderer78

alta stare wrote:

For a normal pc user Mint Cinnamon or Ubuntu is recommend as it has a friendly user interface. Try one of those first then try others and you will get a feel for it.

Been recommended both before. Thank you

ikeano29

The blue screen of death has a code on it that describes what the problem is and he never mentioned that.
Try hiren boot cd on pen or disk, lots of software on that to tell you what the problem is