Gallery of Lights
The Site => General discussion => Topic started by: Mike on May 19, 2012, 04:28:40 PM
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My parents' computer died around 2AM yesterday morning when a transformer blew about a mile from my house. We only lost power for a few moments, but now the computer just has a blank screen with a blinking horizontal white line in top left corner. Is it the hardrive? It's an e machines computer from between 2004-06, so it's likely had its day... Thank goodness I have a laptop. ;D Though i have no way to print anything now since my laptop isn't hooked up to the printer (printer is the same age as their computer). To print something from my laptop, I'd put it on a flashdrive, bring it up on their computer, and print it from there.
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@streetlight98 Try unplugging the computer waiting for 2 or 3 minutes then plug it in and see if it'll fire up. (that'll give it a full reset...since with modern computers when turned 'off' they're not fully off)
There coulda been a surge that fried something:
If only the harddrive died it would give a message like "harddrive failure" or "no operating system found"
If the motherboard was fried it either won't turn on at all, or will turn on but do nothing.
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It turns on, the eMachines logo appears for a few moments as normal, and them instead of the windows icon appearing, a horizontal white cursor in the left corner appears on a black screen.
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Hey Mike, try sticking in a live cd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD) with an OS (such as Linux) on it in the cd drive and reboot. If it manages to load something then the hard drive might have failed or got corrupted. Oh and can you hear the hard drive "spin up" (should sound like this) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6L2LD0ovsE) when you start the computer?
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I also recommend trying a bootable CD as joe_347V said.
I've got an older eMachines computer & i'm pretty sure there's a way to not make it show the eMachines logo (instead showing the self test) .. I think its just pressing one of the 'F' keys when it appears
Also try pressing 'Del' as soon as the logo appears - this should get you into the BIOS setup screen... don't change anything, but just make sure it shows something other than the likes of [none] or [error] for Primary Master harddrive.
(then there should be an option to exit.. on mine its 'esc' a couple times and select 'exit discarding changes')
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Oh and another thing about the boot cd, some computers (usually older ones) are not setup to boot from a cd by default so you'll have to go to the BIOS and check the boot order. To make a live cd you just download a suitable disc image online and then burn in to a CD.
PS I moved the computer posts to a new topic. :P
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@ Joe; The tower was making the usuall sounds it makes. I believe I had heard the hard drive, but it's not as loud as the one in your link. It turns out my parents are going to Staples today for a new computer while I'm at school today since they said "somthing else is sure to die the longer we wait to upgrade."
@ Xmaslightguy; I got the menu screen up after the eMachines logo went away. There's a "MENU" button on the monitor frame.
BTW, thanks or your help guys. :) I wish my parents would have waited a bit longer to get a new PC though. :-\
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@streetlight98
Too bad your parents replaced it so soon..
Was the menu you got a windows boot menu? (press "F8" as soon as the logo eMachines disappears)
If so then that means it was able to atleast access the harddrive .. try selecting safe mode from there
The other 'menu' button on the monitor frame is just for the monitor itself.
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Nope i couldn't get anything along the lines of Windows to show. It has Microsoft 2003 and Windows XP if that clears up anything. My parents left the old PC and monitor at Staples to be recycled, though my dad cut the power cord to the monitor and saved it for me since he knows i use them in order to plug in my lights. The new set up is a HP tower with an HP keyboard and mouse, with an Acer 20" LCD monitor. The tower came equipped with Windows 7.
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Hmm, I wonder if they kept the old hard drive sometimes you might be able to get data off it on a another computer, that and I tend to be secretive about my data so I keep them anyways. xP
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My parents didn't keep anything from the old computer set-up. they brought home a new HP printer today as well. Everything is HP except the monitor lol.
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My parents didn't keep anything from the old computer set-up. they brought home a new HP printer today as well. Everything is HP except the monitor lol.
Throwing away or giving away computer without anything is more dangerous than you think.....there's a lot out there who will look for computers near trash or stores and steal or buy (from thift shops from people who have no clue about hard drives or computers or don't think of it) and steal as much data, attempt to find credit card info, home address and all that....I have done some reading on that....
For me when I get new computers I always keep the newest older hard drives and install them in the new computers. and the even older ones gets formatted, demoted or even taken apart......depends on size, value, age.....but I rarely throw a hard drive away directly or giving away....without formatting and writing zeros and formatting again and writing zeros again! Also I tend to take off the Microsoft serial numbers to save....they always come in handy!
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At the moment I'm writing this post on a computer I found at the recycle centre!
It was 99% working (only the CD drive was shot). Otherwise the HDD was working and still had the previous owner's data! Fortunately that person's been lucky, since I don't have bad intentions and I won't use the HDD's data. The HDD is not going anywhere (I replaced it by a brand new HDD and installed Linux instead of Windows, no more Microsoft for me! ;D)
Some people aren't too afraid of others stealing their data on the computers they throw away LOL.
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At the moment I'm writing this post on a computer I found at the recycle centre!
It was 99% working (only the CD drive was shot). Otherwise the HDD was working and still had the previous owner's data! Fortunately that person's been lucky, since I don't have bad intentions and I won't use the HDD's data. The HDD is not going anywhere (I replaced it by a brand new HDD and installed Linux instead of Windows, no more Microsoft for me! ;D)
Some people aren't too afraid of others stealing their data on the computers they throw away LOL.
Smart you are...how new is the computer by the way? Which Linux are you using? I use Ubuntu...but I also like Mint Linux and the Dream Linux
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Smart you are...how new is the computer by the way? Which Linux are you using? I use Ubuntu...but I also like Mint Linux and the Dream Linux
Yup, I use Linux Mint 12! It's just... a million levels over Windows! But as an experienced Windows user (since 3.11 for WorkGroups xD), I have to learn a bunch of new things, since Linux is a whole different world LOL.
As of the computer itself:
(http://www.pcarenahungary.com/pricelist/oriaskep/ibm-thinkcentre-m51-t-8144--872.jpg)
A IBM ThinkCentre M51 from 2003 or 2004:
- Intel Pentium 4 HT 3,06GHz CPU
- 1GB RAM (2X 256MB + one 512MB RAM unit I added)
- Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB HDD, with Linux Mint 12 Lisa
And some things I did or will modify:
- Original shot CD drive replaced by a LG CD drive+burner / DVD drive
- ATI Radeon X1600 Pro graphics card on PCI-E
- Hauppauge WIN-TV PVR 150 tuner (RCA inputs + S-Video input + RF input)
- A 3in computer fan from a power supply connected directly to the +12V, to throw all that heat out of the computer!
The thing I love the most with this computer is the quality. It is clearly a professional-grade computer. The inside is so brilliantly designed, you don't need any screwdriver to replace something, since all components are attached with clips! (Except the motherboard):
(http://www.pacificgeek.com/productimages/xl/TCM51-LNX-5C-3.jpg)
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@ Jace; the old computer was left at Staples. They have a computer recycling program.
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@ Jace; the old computer was left at Staples. They have a computer recycling program.
It looks like that's what Jace was afraid of in his post, if whoever that worked at Staples had bad intentions they could look through the old hard drive and find stuff like SSNs (Social Security Numbers), banking info, passwords, addresses, emails, etc and use it in identity theft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theft) fraud, and even sell that data to others.
Personally I keep all my old hard drives for this reason even if I'm not using them but formatting a drive by rewriting lots of random data (such as by DBAN) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darik%27s_Boot_and_Nuke) should wipe the drive clean enough so people can't pull data off it.
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Hmm. I should talk with my parents about this tomorrow then. My friend's mom got her identity stolen from her own sister-in-law. :o