VISTA ???
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: 38N
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Power ?
Power-supply is nominally the simplest part of the CPU environment, but also the one that can mess up nearly everything (or anything) when it is having a mood.
Power is suspect for faults at initial startup time because the disk drive(s) tend to be busy a lot. Thermally triggered faults... when room is cold or room is hot, may also indicate a power problem. Some machines will work perfectly at one room temp and fail miserably when a few degrees cooler or warmer.
Power supplies wear out from passing time, from overheating, from surges on the supply source power caused by motors, etc. They can be weirdly intermittent in effect and habits.
For that, substitution of the supply is the simplest course. Can often be done using a loaner or spare supply without removing things that are bolted down - if the replacement is balanced precariously for duration of test and the original left where mounted.
One caution is to be careful to not flex the motherboard too very much when removing the (often stiffly fit) main power connector. Supporting the board some when re-inserting is also wise. Bending the MB a lot causes hairline cracks in circuit layers. Then you pull all your hair out trying to locate them.
Power is suspect for faults at initial startup time because the disk drive(s) tend to be busy a lot. Thermally triggered faults... when room is cold or room is hot, may also indicate a power problem. Some machines will work perfectly at one room temp and fail miserably when a few degrees cooler or warmer.
Power supplies wear out from passing time, from overheating, from surges on the supply source power caused by motors, etc. They can be weirdly intermittent in effect and habits.
For that, substitution of the supply is the simplest course. Can often be done using a loaner or spare supply without removing things that are bolted down - if the replacement is balanced precariously for duration of test and the original left where mounted.
One caution is to be careful to not flex the motherboard too very much when removing the (often stiffly fit) main power connector. Supporting the board some when re-inserting is also wise. Bending the MB a lot causes hairline cracks in circuit layers. Then you pull all your hair out trying to locate them.
Finally got it fixed this week.
Had to take it to a repair shop.
New Motherboard and several quid lighter in the wallet and it's back where it belongs.
For what it's worth the workshop struggled to get the tuners to work. They had installed the Pinnacle Media Centre software to get the driver for the tuner card. This conflicted with the Vista MCE so even though the tuner was there in device manager it would not receive a signal.
Uninstalled Pinnacle, downloaded the latest drivers and wayhey here we are.
Trouble is the DVD doesn't work now......
Had to take it to a repair shop.
New Motherboard and several quid lighter in the wallet and it's back where it belongs.
For what it's worth the workshop struggled to get the tuners to work. They had installed the Pinnacle Media Centre software to get the driver for the tuner card. This conflicted with the Vista MCE so even though the tuner was there in device manager it would not receive a signal.
Uninstalled Pinnacle, downloaded the latest drivers and wayhey here we are.
Trouble is the DVD doesn't work now......
