Process of Elimination

[kop442000]

Hi guys,

To cut a long story short, my PC one day just started sometimes staying black on boot up / coming on with DOS error messages (maybe from me having to power down so much when the screen was just blank).

It always sounds like it is booting ok (except no bleeps), and it is not a monitor problem or anything.
I have since managed (with help from these forums :-) to put my hard disk into another machine and retreive my data, so now I am just trying to figure what went wrong with my machine.

I think someone on a forum said that it sounded like the heatsync and now that I know what that is, it appears to have quite a bit of dust on the fan blades. (did I once hear this might indicate that it is indeed the broken part?)

Basically, I am trying to find out which part of my machine I need to replace. (If any?)

Many thanks for any replies posted!

[Flame]

First... What kind of DOS messages are these? Second... Have you at least checked the heat sink to see if it is the problem?

[glb]Flame[/glb]

[kop442000]

I don't know what messages exactly, because the screen would usually go black before I could properly read. But the general feeling was that errors had occured and I couldn't get any further.

How do I check the heat sink? Do I have to buy another to try in the machine?

[dl65]

kop442000
"I think someone on a forum said that it sounded like the heatsync and now that I know what that is, it appears to have quite a bit of dust on the fan blades. (did I once hear this might indicate that it is indeed the broken part?) "

For the record ......its a heat sink .........it is normal for dust to accumulate inside the case , particularly on the heat sink and the fan blade .  That's why it's necessary to clean out the dust from time to time .......Dust on the fan does not indicate that is broken ....

If you get messages appearing ...tell us exactly what they said.......

Let us know

dl65