Is this just happening with one specific disc, or is it affecting multiple ones? When you go into my Computer and click on the CD-ROM drive after it spins up—if you double-click it, what kind of error message are you getting?
The only way to actually check if the battery is still good is to pop it out of the motherboard and hit it with a multimeter—you just need to see if it’s still putting out that rated 3V.
And honestly, since you're already in there, you might as well just swap it out. It's a standard CR2032, so you can find one pretty much anywhere, and they aren't exactly expensive ($3.25).
I guess you should be able to handle this yourself without much trouble. http://en.kioskea.net/faq/625-replac...d-cmos-battery Just make sure that once you put the battery back in—whether it's the old one or a new one—you head straight into the BIOS to fix the date and time settings.
So, try this—just connect the power connectors to the motherboard (the 20/24-pin and the 4/8-pin CPU one) and hook up the processor. Nothing else. Just see if it'll boot. If the fans spin up and the LEDs light up, shut it down and add the RAM. Then try again, then add the GPU, and so on—basically just keep adding parts until you find whichever piece of hardware is actually preventing the PC from starting up.
I have to say, I’m not quite sure how swapping out thermal paste on the CPU relates to installing a new IBM, but what you can try is just going step-by-step. Try plugging the cables and devices back into the motherboard one at a time to figure out what’s actually preventing the PC from booting up. Maybe disconnect the IBM, the optical drive, and everything else—just leave the bare essentials connected to the board. If it powers up then, you can add each component back one by one until you find whatever is causing the hang-up.
People usually just call this "collaboration"—you could test out how it functions using something like Google Docs, for instance, though I'm sure there are plenty of other services out there too.
none said:Hey everyone. I might be posting in the wrong thread or an old one, but I’m hoping for some advice anyway. I'm looking to pick up an external drive, but I could use some recommendations. I found a few used ones online, but the issue is—who knows what kind of shape they're actually in. Is it better to just buy a new one somewhere, or is it worth the risk to save a little on a used one? For example, I'm looking at a used 1TB for $100, or a brand new 500GB for $133. Hmm... or maybe I should just look into an SSD? What's your experience with this? Thanks.
Buying a used drive is always a gamble—I'd definitely go with something new. Also, there isn't much point in getting an SSD for external storage unless you're just looking to show off how fast you can move files. What's your main priority here; budget or capacity? Generally, the bigger the capacity, the better the value per gigabyte. You can even find 3 TB drives for around $300. Also, you should probably decide if you're okay with a drive that needs its own power adapter plugged into the wall.
It's mostly because sites like Speedshare and those other similar services just want to bait you into buying a premium account if you actually want decent speeds. I just tested one file—only about 10 MB—and my upload was sitting at 500 kbps while the download was crawling at 30 kbps.
Maybe just use Dropbox to swap files with each other.
I'm wondering what the absolute minimum budget should be if I were to put together a Home Theater PC—something capable of playing back 1080p High Profile 10-bit TrueHD video. As far as High Profile 10-bit playback goes, I've gathered the impression that I'd probably need at least an Intel Core i3, though maybe I'm wrong about that.
I don't know—there might be a chance you could try a BIOS update, just to see if that actually fixes things. It isn't necessarily a guaranteed fix, but I guess it's just strange how the laptop is acting up like this.