PC has died.

chillidoggy · July 2017

I had it running yesterday, playing Spotify. All of a sudden i noticed the screen jumbled up, and the music started being garbled. Shut it down, restarted, and although I think I can hear the hard drive running, there's nothing on the screen, and it now beeps at me from inside the tower unit.

Anyone got any ideas?

chillidoggy · July 2017

OK, the poxy thing has just restarted. Dunno what that was all about.

Fretwired · July 2017

My Dell sometimes does this .. open the case and make sure the memory is seated properly ..

Grunfeld · July 2017

chillidoggy said:

...and the music started being garbled.... it now beeps at me from inside the tower unit.

Anyone got any ideas?

You were playing Skrillex?

prowla · July 2017

It's probably a good idea to back up your data (if you haven't got one, USB connected hard drives are quite cheap).

Steffo · July 2017

Shouldn't this be in tributes?

Myranda · July 2017

What do the beeps say?

Hootsmon · July 2017

.

funkyfraz · July 2017

Give it a good clean inside. I was dubious about what difference it would make until my pc started acting oddly. Worked good as new after a proper clean. Not saying it'll make a difference for you but it costs nothing!

Axe_meister · July 2017

A soft reboot will not always clear the contents of your memory so if there is some logical corruption the OS Bios can't clear the memory will show as corrupt on soft startup.
A Switch off, Wait, Switch on may clear an issue. Question is why did the memory get corrupted.
Could be a crap piece of software.
Memory with a defective block
Memory not seated properly and when it gets hot a connect temporarily breaks.
A crap component on the motherboard or just too much heat (clear the old Fans of dust)
Putting a decent small water cooler (£40) in my HTPC has helped massively in regards to stability. I now measure my windows uptime in Months.

Guitar_Slinger · July 2017

Steffo said:

Shouldn't this be in tributes?

My money was on Phil Collins.

Myranda · July 2017

Myranda said:

What do the beeps say?

Now, I was actually asking a proper question... with many motherboards the beep code will tell you what the problem is...

But this seems to have been overlooked as silly.

Sometimes I fear my consistent sarcasm has made it hard to explain some things

Funkfingers · July 2017

BIOS error code beeps should provide the answer.

Scrambled screen could be graphics card issue. Garbled audio could be sound card issue. On a more modern PC, the graphics and sound chips may be integral to the motherboard. (Difficult to know without being told the machine spec.)

A defective BIOS backup battery would leave the computer unable to retrieve any user settings.

darthed1981 · July 2017

Back up your data, it's like drinking plenty of water, you just should.

As a one off, I'd think not too much of that. If it keeps happening check and reseat your memory and check the cpu fan isn't loose.

There is quite a good utility called speedfan that lets you check temps and monitor hdd smart health data. That's quIte useful if looking for a hardware fault.

Also check all your drivers in device manager. I've fixed a lot of weird issues in windows 10 with readily available drivers from Windows update.

Danny1969 · July 2017

It's either a memory fault or video fault and if your machine doesn't have a dedicated video card in the PCIE slot then it's GPU could well "share" some of the system ram . Meaning bad ram or slot corrupting the video and then the beeping

As recommended above back up everything while the system is running ... although you can always remove a drive from a dead PC and backup it's easier to do it while it works and there's no permissions issues etc

mike_l · July 2017

Myranda said:

What do the beeps say?

Beep.

Emp_Fab · July 2017

Is it saying "I'm the property of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a resident of these parts and it's a private message for him. "

chillidoggy · July 2017

Thank for the suggestions. It's an old PC I run in my garage specifically so I have the Lotus parts manual and service notes available, plus music from Spotify, I don't use it for anything else.

The only thing I do differently is lay the tower on its side for space reasons, but from my research that shouldn't have any negative effect, so I'm mystified!

Jaycee · July 2017

Sounds as if your harddrive is on its way out. Get everything off it before (or just in case) it packs up.

Emp_Fab · July 2017

I do wish people would resist the temptation to post daft guesses, however well meaning they are. The symptoms described point to anything BUT a hard drive failing. If I asked for help on why my carrots weren't growing well and someone suggested it might be because there wasn't enough bleach in the soil, I'd be pretty pissed off.

If you don't know enough about a subject to give advice then don't.

Danny1969 · July 2017

chillidoggy said:

Thank for the suggestions. It's an old PC I run in my garage specifically so I have the Lotus parts manual and service notes available, plus music from Spotify, I don't use it for anything else.
The only thing I do differently is lay the tower on its side for space reasons, but from my research that shouldn't have any negative effect, so I'm mystified!

Laying it on it's side may have slightly moved either a memory module or the video card (if it has a separate video card fitted)
If you consider these plastic slots have many tiny contacts which need to mate with the memory module..... and the plastic slots get slightly dis formed over the years due to heat you can see why it happens

If it's a tower unit then laying it on side will mean the motherboard is horizontal to the ground and gravity will help keep things in place .... however laying it on the other side will mean the memory and video card are now upside down and trying to fall out the board.
You need to lay it on the side that keeps the monitor connector, network port, mouse, USB ports nearest the floor

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PC has died.

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