Friday, March 16, 2007

Low-Tech

What does it mean, right, when you're happily responding to comments in your blog, and then mid-comment your computer makes a short popping sound and then literally goes out, like a burnt-out lightbulb?

This is not a rhetorical question.

This exact scenario occurred yesterday evening at my desk. The day after the internet died altogether for an hour or so, which motivated me to go on a five-mile-walk, which was doubtless a good thing. I had a migraine yesterday, though, and it was cold, so I didn't go on any walks that time.

At first I thought maybe the power had failed, although it did occur to me that if that were the case, the computer should still be running on battery power for at least a couple of minutes. And anyway, the power had not gone out. So I turned my computer back on, and it actually did turn back on, but, in spite of the loud dial-up screeching it emitted during my attempts, it would not log back on to the internet for another hour or so.

Today, so far, however, has been fine.

Any insight?

7 comments:

Scott R. Davis said...

go for the gold and get the apple. it does not screech or complain. peace. hope it continues to churn good ideas for you. scott
www.scottrdavis.blogspot.com

dave grosser said...

I posted your post on the Epic Classifieds. Someone might respond on Monday.

Jennwith2ns said...

Scott--I would LOVE to get an Apple. Seeing as how right now I can't even afford an internet connexion more expensive than $10/month dial-up, however, I don't think that one's going to be possible right now.

But it happened again later last night. Dave, thanks for posting my post. Dad thinks it might be overheating . . .

Scott R. Davis said...

go for the simple minimac machine that uses your current printer and screen. that way it can give you reliability at a modest price. scott

dave grosser said...

Or it could be a bad BIOS chip (the chip that runs when the computer starts up and tells the computer to start loading windows, etc.). Save often.

dave grosser said...

Overheating might be the problem, good point. When you run the computer do you hear the fan?

dave grosser said...

Only one response on the Classifieds:

Hmm. The last time I had that, there was a 1 square inch hole in my motherboard from a blown capacitor. (Suffice it to say, the computer didn't restart.)

Since it's a laptop, obviously it's a fair bit harder to open it up and check stuff out, but if you can, it wouldn't be a bad idea just to open it up to see if everything is okay or not. If there's a scorch mark in there somewhere, I'd back up the data sooner rather than later, since you are probably living on borrowed time. Some repair stores (some I've found in town, in fact, but I don't remember names, unfortunately) will do repairs like that (i.e. that require soldering), but it can be pricey (with no real guarantees), and it may be more cost effective to replace.

Of course, it may have just been a surge protector noise or something far less evil than flaming components, but...
_________________
Mark Anderson

So you might want to try that and see if you can see anything scorched inside, I guess... :(