Posts by Thomas Wells5

Just hunt down some old HD 6000 or 7000 series Radeon card for maybe $30 or $40 and call it a day. Problem solved.

I neglected to mention that I actually tested a few different hard drives using the same kid—and even tried an optical drive—but the result was identical. It looks like the SATA ports on the motherboard are just completely shot. I gave Best Buy a call, and they’re sending a courier over to pick up the defective unit so I can get a replacement sent out instead.

So, here's the situation: I fire the thing up, the fans start spinning away, but there's absolutely nothing on the screen. If I shut it down and yank the SATA cable from the hard drive—or just kill the power to the drive entirely—it actually boots up. I've already swapped in a few different drives to test, and it’s the exact same story every single time. Is there some kind of fix for this, or am I looking at a total loss that needs to be sent back for a replacement?

I’m going to bring this topic back up because my parts finally arrived today. I’ve finished the assembly and successfully installed Windows 10, but I’ve run into a frustrating little hiccup. Twice now, after performing a restart or just shutting down Windows 10 and trying to boot back up, the system simply refuses to turn on. The only way I can get it to respond is by physically unplugging the hard drive and then swapping the SATA port on the motherboard. Is there perhaps some setting tucked away in the BIOS that I could tweak to stop this from happening?

We’re going to go with what Ryan Hayes82 suggested. I'm definitely not interested in sniffing around for anything else; let's just grab this and hope they don't come out with some new version in another two months. At least this way, we'll be covered under warranty for a bit.

Hey everyone, a buddy of mine just had his motherboard die on him. He’s running an old Intel Core i3 processor—doesn't really matter, though—and the machine is basically just a glorified paperweight for office work and web browsing; zero gaming capability here. Since his 650 GB hard drive is still perfectly healthy and his 550W Fortron power supply is practically brand new (only about 20 days old), I was thinking about swapping out the motherboard, CPU, and RAM to get him back up and running. I could really use some advice from you all, as my budget is capped at $333. I managed to find a potential setup for roughly $283 over at Future IT
. Here is the breakdown
:

Intel Core i3

-
1
+$88
1 x $88
Gigabyte A68HM-K

+$129
1 x $129

Apacer DDR3 1600MHz, 4GB

+$71
1 x $71

The only thing giving me pause is this processor, because the specs say it doesn't have integrated graphics. Since I haven't dealt with that before, does that mean the computer won't even boot without a dedicated graphics card? It might not be a huge deal, though, since we could probably just repurpose that old NVIDIA GeForce GT series card currently sitting in the machine, though I can't recall the exact model number.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.
Best,

Exactly what my colleague mentioned above—63 degrees is way too high for an idle temperature. When you start running any heavy tasks, that number is going to spike straight to 100, and the whole system will just force a shutdown to save itself. If you aren't comfortable tinkering with hardware yourself, honestly, just take it to a local repair shop. Have them open it up, blow out the dust, and obviously apply some fresh thermal paste. That should get things back under control.

First, I’d suggest running Core Temp to check your temperatures. If everything looks fine and you aren't hitting that 100-degree mark, then maybe try a different power adapter. Honestly, my best guess is that your battery has completely given up the ghost; if it weren't totally shot, the machine wouldn't just die on you instantly.

You take the results from the Mayo Clinic over to your own doctor, who then reviews everything and writes up the specific prescription you need.

swiftfalcon89 said:I have a question that I'm not quite sure where to post, so I'll just drop it here.
A friend of mine needs to get some eye imaging done, which can only be handled by a Private Rheumatology Clinic, so naturally, it’s out-of-pocket. Right now, at a clinic like Mayo Clinic, it costs about $133 per eye (which is pretty standard for most clinics around here). He did a little digging on Google and found out that over in Sarajevo, at that same clinic, the exact same imaging costs just a tiny bit more than $67 per eye—so almost half the price. My question is: will the doctors here in the States cause any issues or refuse to honor the results if he gets them done in Canada? He actually has to head to Sarajevo next week for work anyway, so it would be convenient, but he's worried about whether his doctors back home in the US will actually accept those findings.

In a way, I'm asking the same thing. I'm heading to Canada in about ten days (to a small town in the Midwest) to have a gastroscopy done at a private clinic. They can sedate me there, which is the whole reason I want to get it done on that trip. I'm also wondering—and frankly, a bit terrified—about whether my doctor here won't want to accept the results and prescribe the necessary treatment.

I mean, I have to agree with Jack Alvarez on this one—it sounds to me like you've got a major hardware failure on your hands, and honestly, I'm pretty damn sure about it.

It could be a failing hard drive, or you might just be looking at a total system collapse if the drive hasn't already given up the ghost. If you can swing it, I’d highly recommend plugging that drive into another PC to run some diagnostics—maybe use something like Hard Disk Sentinel. As soon as you fire up the software, you'll get a clear picture of its actual health status. If you don't have access to another machine, your best bet is to whip up a bootable USB drive using Windows (you can use Rufus to get it done). Try running the installation from there; if the process hangs or crashes right when you hit the formatting stage, then yeah, your drive is likely toast. Even if you actually manage to push the installation through, you still need to run those health tests mentioned above just to be safe.

maybe give AOMEI Partition Assistant the free version a shot

wanderingpanther68 said:Why on earth do these General Electric batteries I get from Best Buy die so fast?🤔 ... they hold up for maybe a year, and then suddenly my PC clock starts losing time. I've already
swapped the battery twice now, and even with this second motherboard, the clock is lagging by about 20 minutes... the absolute most I can get out of them before they fail is a single year.
It’s either low-quality cells or just ancient motherboards. Looking at what Best Buy has in stock, they only carry those $3.25 ones.

I distinctly remember one CMOS battery lasting nearly eight years before the clock even started
drifting, yet these ones from Best Buy barely make it through twelve months. What the hell? This latest one was also from Best Buy—I picked it up last fall, everything worked fine
and then suddenly, over the last few days, the clock is lagging again. ^^

Just grab a Duracell CR 2032 from a local hardware store; it'll last four times longer and will cost you $6.75 max
.

I’d go so far as to bet that Windows 10 is the real culprit here; it’s likely pulling down some massive update in the background without even giving you a heads-up, which would definitely explain why your internet feels like it's crawling at a snail's pace.

wearymason4 said:When you hook up that Linksys to act as a repeater, the max speed takes a hit compared to when it's hardwired and running as an AP.

That isn't necessarily a rule, though. They can actually perform quite well; my own wireless setup connects to the main router and manages to pull about 23-24 Mbps from a 30 Mbps line, even with three walls standing in the way.

I actually have a similar Linksys router sitting at my place right now... if you want my two cents, just wipe that thing back to factory settings and go through the configuration process properly from scratch.

That repeater can actually pick up the signal from your main router wirelessly and broadcast the network, which means you don't even need to bother with that cable at all.
Basically, once you've performed the reset, connect to the repeater using your laptop—either via Wi-Fi or by plugging in an Ethernet cable—then pull up its settings page (there should be something in your manual explaining how to do this; usually, it's accessible via a specific web address http://linksysrepeater.net ).
From there, just run the quick setup wizard, which basically just walks you through a "next, next, finish" sequence.
And voilà, you're all set.

Exactly... just like my colleague mentioned above, antivirus programs tend to clash. They end up flagging one another as threats, which means you really need to uninstall one of them from your computer to stop the fighting. My suggestion? Since that Norton license has already expired, just wipe it off your system entirely. Stick with Avast instead—it's free and serves as a perfectly solid antivirus program.

Look, it’s pretty straightforward: you just buy an external drive enclosure, slide the hard drive inside, and you're good to go. As for those cables the guy from eBay linked—I honestly have no clue; I couldn't make heads or tails of them myself, though perhaps I just misread the description and missed the point entirely..
From what I can gather, you're trying to repurpose two different hard drives, right?
Now, it all depends on the specs. You've got the bulky 3.5" drives meant for desktop towers, and then there are the smaller 2.5" ones used in laptops—and judging by your setup, you're definitely dealing with a laptop drive here.
There are also two main connection types: PATA and SATA. PATA is the legacy stuff with those old-school IDE pins... whereas SATA uses the modern connector (that thin, L-shaped little thing).
Based on my reading of the thread, you're working with an old laptop from around 2004, which means it almost certainly uses a PATA interface with those pin connectors. So, all you really need is a 2.5" PATA enclosure. Just pop the drive in, plug it into your computer via USB, and call it a day.

Well, I certainly went on a bit of a tangent there...

Actually, the issue was definitely with the touchpad—it was a hardware failure, plain and simple. I ended up swapping it out with one from an old laptop, and now everything is running smoothly without any more glitches.🙂