IS MY COMP DEAD ??
Have pressed start and it start to make a noise the goes dead
after afew min will do same thing again if i unplug
have tries new power lead what shall i do

Sounds serious, first likelihood is the power supply. Does the fan come on in the power supply or not, is the hard disc spinning, do you get anything at all showing on screen?

SC is probably right. PC failures like that are almost always due to PSU failures. The only way to check it is by checking the output voltages with a meter. Even that is not infallible, as the voltage may be OK off-load.

Given that PSUs cost about 20-40, it's almost worth just replacing it to see if that fixes the problem.

The only moving parts in your PC are the disks and fans. The most electrically stressed part is the PSU.

The best way of reducing stress on all of these is to leave the machine running. Don't keep switching it on and off, it doesn't like it.

If you have a laptop, get a fan-assisted cooling stand for it, such as that made by Belkin. If you mainly use your laptop as a desktop, remove the battery from it so that it's not always close to maximum charge and being recharged. Li-On (Lithium) batteries are best stored at 50% charge.

As an example, we had two servers that were decommissioned for a few months. When we tried to put them back into service, neither worked. Both PSUs had failed.

I agree with MM.

As a long shot, you could try opening the machine up, carefully clear away any dust, make sure that the fans turn freely, disconect the power leads to all of the disk drives and unplug all leads apart from the monitor.

It will not boot because you have no power to the disks but you may get the initial screen up. If you do then turn off and reconnect things until it stops working. If you don't get the initial screnn then the PSU is the best bet.

Some while ago, I downloade a program, named I think
Smart Defrag.
After trying it, and finding it no better than MS, I
uninstalled it.
I've now discovered each time I start my comp it's
doing a defrag aotomatically, using 370meg of the memory.
I can't find any trace of it in programs, toolbar, processec, or applications.
Any way I can remove it?

Please.!!!
It's an old comp running Win 2000 with 512 RAM,
so it slows performance considerably.
mac

Tyketto

I have this program on my machine and do use it occasionally. I installed it because it had reasonably good reviews and was also Free. In fact, I am quite happy with it. Anyhow, I have just opened it and checked up on a few things:

There is an 'Auto Defrag' facility and also a 'Schedule' facility within the body of the main program.

Auto Defrag is tick enabled to do a certain amount of defragging by default. All of these have now just been disabled by me on my own machine.

I was also surprised to see the Scheduler had been set on my own machine 'At 22:00 every Sun of every 2 weeks, starting 27/01/2009' - This has also just been disabled by me.

It seems these two facilities have been set to do a particular job and now you do not now appear to have the program installed so as to go back into it and change either of them by unticking them.

The only thing I can think of is to do a Re-Install, then change the settings back, then do an Uninstall.

The program does have its own 'Uninstall' facility but it does make you wonder at times like this, whether to get a better 'Installer /Uninstaller' program and one other than that supplied by Microsoft or the suppliers of the program obtained or purchased.

"whether to get a better 'Installer /Uninstaller' program "

I'd love one of those.

Pointers please, kind sir.

TP

Tyketto

Goto Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services.

Make sure that you are on the tab that shows all services and scroll down to try and find the service that looks like it is the Smart Defrag. Stop the service and then dissable it.

That should do the trick, although you may get an error message that it can't start the servive when you boot.

Has anyone ever heard of or know what a Rippers 0 browser is?

Ripper O, as I recall, is a browser that copies ("rips") a copy of a web site for offline browsing or closer examination offline. I'll phone a friend if you want to know more.

Thanks DelBoy, I thought it might be something like that, especially seeing as it went through the whole site in 2 minutes. What benefit would that be to anyone?

198.80.142.97 in Boston.

Must be after your trading secrets, Hil. That's Thomson Financial Services.

That's who I came up with too. Strange.

Thanks for checking.

Just checked to see if there are any new Microsoft Updates.

Do I really need 'Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Family Update (KB951847) x86' and which I see is a 248MB sized download?

I have a friend who's laptop has faulty motherboard - and completely dead.

He has bought a new Dell Laptop today.

What is the easiest way to transfer the data from his old hard drive in the faulty laptop to his new one.

(Easy to do with a Desktop harddrive using external enclosure - but are they available for laptop harddrives?)

Have a look at post 7786 onwards on this thread. The answer is there.

-- Timeliner,

re: external drive enclosures: yes they are. PC World have a couple at 19-25 quid, probably available for half the price elsewhere.

Bought couple from ebay for less than 10 for the two.

Thanks SC and zzaxx99

I am looking at getting a USB 2.0 Dongal(stick) for a Laptop and/or PC to watch Freeview etc, which ones can you recommend
it must be plug in and watch, no other video cards needed except the ones already installed

Thanks TP & Opto.
Did an new install (it was still on the comp,
but not showing anywhere)
Changed all the settings. OK now.
Learning.
Quick count count of mem usage of the Processes
matches the Commit Charge,
but still getting small CPU blip about every 30secs.
Dosn't seem to do any harm.
Tks
mac