I'm sick of dealing with my PC. Half of the parts are from my friend and after having it out of commission for like a year, I can buy a computer with its specs for 1/5 what I've had to spend on it. From now on, I'm going to build my own computers and get parts from stores rather than trusting someone even if he's built a billion computers before. I don't have a friend who also has a PC (damn all those people with laptops) so I can't test each individual part to see what is giving me the problem and most computer stores charge so much that I might as well go and build a brand new computer. I know that Fry's charges $60 but I was wondering if there's any private places in the Bay Area that does it cheaper. I tried looking on Craigslist but half of the places I called had disconnected phone numbers and the ones I was able to reach sounded kinda shady. I just want to know what's wrong with my computer so that I can actually fix it. If anyone around here wants to help me out, I'd love you for it. Thanks.
[Offtopic] Request: Cheap place in the Bay Area for PC Hardware Diagnostic?
- Thread starter vietgurl
- Start date
Nothing in any of my PCI slots work. My TV tuner and sound card aren't being recognized by my PC at all. I tried to uninstall the drivers but couldn't reinstall them because the program couldn't detect the hardware as being installed in my computer. I found out about this after the fan was basically fried off my video card and I had to RMA one of my sticks of RAM. Oh, one of my hard drives also decided to go bad awhile back. I want to know if this is my motherboard that's being mean or my actual sound card/tv tuner; I don't have any friends who own PC's (darn all the laptops at college) so I can't test it out. That and I'm just kinda sick and tired of this PC but I need it because I can't play games like Oblivion and Rise of Nations on my laptop. *stops ranting*
[quote name='vietgurl']Nothing in any of my PCI slots work. My TV tuner and sound card aren't being recognized by my PC at all. I tried to uninstall the drivers but couldn't reinstall them because the program couldn't detect the hardware as being installed in my computer. I found out about this after the fan was basically fried off my video card and I had to RMA one of my sticks of RAM. Oh, one of my hard drives also decided to go bad awhile back. I want to know if this is my motherboard that's being mean or my actual sound card/tv tuner; I don't have any friends who own PC's (darn all the laptops at college) so I can't test it out. That and I'm just kinda sick and tired of this PC but I need it because I can't play games like Oblivion and Rise of Nations on my laptop. *stops ranting*[/QUOTE]
how old is the pc, what are hte specs, have you tried to wipe the hard drive completely and reinstall windows? Also, by any chance do you have a gateway?
how old is the pc, what are hte specs, have you tried to wipe the hard drive completely and reinstall windows? Also, by any chance do you have a gateway?
[quote name='BasketCase1080']how old is the pc, what are hte specs, have you tried to wipe the hard drive completely and reinstall windows? Also, by any chance do you have a gateway?[/QUOTE]
I built this PC...with the help of my friend (well, his help was that he told me he was better than me at getting cheaper parts...) I've formatted the drive a bunch of times and reinstalled Windows to no avail. These are my specs
3.0 GHz P4
1 GB RAM (one of the 512 sticks died but I got it replaced)
Abit SG-72 motherboard
550W Power Supply (I just upgraded from a 400W so if anything happened, it was through the 400W JGE Power Supply)
Geforce 6800 GT 256 MB Video Card (I also just upgraded this from a 9800 Pro that was fried)
Soundblaster Audigy LS - currently not working
ATI TV Tuner - currently not working
I'm not good at working with the BIOS so if there's something that I might be doing wrong there... I just need some help with this computer before it becomes obsolete
I built this PC...with the help of my friend (well, his help was that he told me he was better than me at getting cheaper parts...) I've formatted the drive a bunch of times and reinstalled Windows to no avail. These are my specs
3.0 GHz P4
1 GB RAM (one of the 512 sticks died but I got it replaced)
Abit SG-72 motherboard
550W Power Supply (I just upgraded from a 400W so if anything happened, it was through the 400W JGE Power Supply)
Geforce 6800 GT 256 MB Video Card (I also just upgraded this from a 9800 Pro that was fried)
Soundblaster Audigy LS - currently not working
ATI TV Tuner - currently not working
I'm not good at working with the BIOS so if there's something that I might be doing wrong there... I just need some help with this computer before it becomes obsolete
I would suggest dowloading 'Active Killdisk' and run that program to completely delete your whole hard drive, and then just do a clean windows xp install so it "should" reinstall all the drivers for you. (clean install just means install to a hard drive that has nothing on it.) Also, are the sticks of ram the same brand?
[quote name='BasketCase1080']I would suggest dowloading 'Active Killdisk' and run that program to completely delete your whole hard drive, and then just do a clean windows xp install so it "should" reinstall all the drivers for you. (clean install just means install to a hard drive that has nothing on it.) Also, are the sticks of ram the same brand?[/QUOTE]
Yup, dual OCZs
Yup, dual OCZs
chemical
CAGiversary!
It's most likely the motherboard.
You mentioned that one of the fans on your video card got "fried." I would guess there's either a problem with the Southbridge chip on your board (are your USB or integrated devices working correctly?) or it's not supplying the correct power to the AGP/PCI slots.
If the latter is true, your cards are probably dead as well.
You mentioned that one of the fans on your video card got "fried." I would guess there's either a problem with the Southbridge chip on your board (are your USB or integrated devices working correctly?) or it's not supplying the correct power to the AGP/PCI slots.
If the latter is true, your cards are probably dead as well.
friedram
CAG Newbie
Word of advice- if you think it's dead, and it's not under warranty, just chuck it and get another part. I used to spend hours trying to figure out hardware issues- but now that I have 4+ machines in my house, I can test the individual pieces very easily. Paying for a monkey to look at your computer is often not worth it- one time I took a buddies machine to a place and the guy didn't have a clue- and eventually came to the same conclusion that I did, the Dell power supply sucked ass and couldn't feed the video card (this was 4 years ago). He said we were fooked, so I removed his DVD decoder card, modem and unhooked his regulard cd drive (he had a burner as well) and viola- magically the computer worked with the vid card- we tried plugging in the other stuff one at a time and every time the thing would die when games started up.
bread's done