Anyone still running Windows 7?

Right, so that balcony of yours is essentially your graphics card.
The GPU lives right there on it.

In short, your processor is overheating out on the balcony.🙂
We just need to figure out why.

RED graphics card—that’s all you care about, right?
Green processor—but that doesn't matter to you right now, does it?

Seriously, thanks guys, I owe you one. At least now I actually know what's broken so I can fix it.

George Sanders37 said:In that last picture you linked, you can see the graphics card in the top half.

It doesn't have a fan, so let me say it again: just grab an 80mm fan with a Molex connector and plug it straight into the power supply, or get the 3-pin version if you've got a spare header on your motherboard.

You can screw the fan directly onto the heatsink if there's enough room between the fins, or—if you're desperate—just use some plastic zip ties (the kind cops use to cuff people 😁).

I'll buy one.

@ Matthew Young35 and Roger Gray8

On that green balcony, that white ribbed part is the thing without a fan. When I touched it, it was freaking HOT.

So yeah, it definitely doesn't have a fan on the GPU, just like you guys said.

Thanks a ton to everyone who helped out. I'm gonna take it to a repair shop so a tech can just install the fan for me.

Joshua Chavez28 said:which basically means there isn't a fan on this card like you guys mentioned earlier.

Man, thanks so much to everyone who jumped in to help me out, I think I'm just gonna take it down to a local repair shop so the tech can try to mount a fan on it myself.

See, that’s just how that specific card is built, man... honestly, though, just slapping a fan on there might not even fix the underlying issue. Is it possible that the heatsink somehow loosened up and isn't making perfect contact with the chip anymore? You should definitely have them apply some fresh thermal paste and make sure they really tighten down that heatsink assembly...

Joshua Chavez28 said:Well, thanks a million, everyone. At least now I know exactly what's going wrong and how to fix it.

I'll pick one up.

@ Matthew Young35 and Roger Gray8

On that green heatsink, there's this white ribbed section without any fan, and when I touched it, it was incredibly hot.

So, just as you both pointed out on the graph, there's no fan there.

I really appreciate all the help. I'm going to take it to a repair shop so a technician can install a fan.

Well, there you have it.
No need to lug the whole PC across town; just bring in that green heatsink with the white ribs.
🙂

I REALLY NEED SOME HELP HERE!

How do I get rid of this orange outline? What am I even supposed to Google to find this thing? It just popped up out of nowhere recently—pretty sure I messed something up in the settings... Anyway, it’s driving me absolutely crazy and I just want everything back to how it was before (without that annoying box)

Here's a little extra context that might matter:
I've moved all my main folders—like My Music, Pictures, etc.—over to my D: drive...



Seriously, please help me kill this thing... It's such an eyesore. I haven't been able to find anything on Google because, well, obviously I have no clue what this specific thing is called. 😢😢

So, I went ahead and installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit yesterday, and I’ve run into two little hiccups—one with my mic and another with my speakers. It’s a bit of a weird one, honestly. Regarding the microphone, the system seems to think everything is fine; if I go into the settings under sound > recording > microphone and run a test, the volume meter bounces up and down perfectly when I talk, which suggests the connection is solid and it's definitely picking up my voice. But here's the kicker: whenever I actually try to record something, say in Audacity or just the standard Windows sound recorder, I can't hear a single thing I've recorded. When I hit playback, it's total silence. It's almost like the mic isn't working at all, even though the visual level indicator in both Audacity and the recorder moves around beautifully, showing that it *is* registering sound... I guess that means the hardware is technically doing its job, if that makes sense? Anyway, the second issue is with the speakers. If I'm watching stuff on YouTube, everything works just fine and the audio is crystal clear, but the moment I try to play any local files—you know, music I've actually downloaded to the PC rather than streaming it—there's absolutely nothing. It's the same deal as the mic; everything seems connected and functional since YouTube works, yet local playback is dead silent. I have a feeling the fix might be something pretty simple, but I'm just not sure how to tackle it. I was hoping maybe someone who knows their way around a system a bit better could point me toward a concrete solution. Thanks, and cheers.

Paul Howard7, just click that volume icon down in your system tray and open up the mixer, then check if everything is cranked up all the way there.

So, I’ve run into a bit of a situation with my laptop where every time I try to boot up Windows 7, it just kicks me straight back to that dreaded blue screen of death... I even attempted to wipe it and install Windows XP, but the moment the installation process starts, I get slapped right back with that same blue screen. Does anyone have any inkling as to what might be causing this? I tried booting into Safe Mode, but honestly, it was a total waste of time... nothing works at all.

Something isn't quite right.

Roger Gray8 said:Paul Howard7, maybe try clicking that volume icon down in the system tray and opening up the mixer, just to see if everything is cranked up there.

Everything is already set to max. I mean, if it wasn't all the way up, I probably wouldn't be hearing anything at all on YouTube.

feralranger72 said:So, I've got this issue with my laptop—every time I try to boot up Windows 7, I just get hit with that dreaded Blue Screen of Death. I actually tried installing Windows XP to see if that would work, but even during the XP setup, it kicks me right back to that blue screen. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I've already tried booting into Safe Mode, but honestly, nothing seems to work.

It sounds like you're looking at a hardware issue. To start troubleshooting, maybe grab a MemTest tool from another computer and run a scan on your RAM.

Man, I’ve been dealing with this absolute nightmare of a PC lately—just constant freezing, and then whenever I try to reboot, I get slapped with a black screen and some cryptic error message. I went ahead and did a clean install of Windows 7, which actually seemed to fix things for a tiny bit, but now I'm right back in the same mess. I'm typing this on my phone because my computer is basically a paperweight right now, just showing me this black screen with a message that says: ... OPTION IF YOUR HDD IS LARGER THAN 1 TB: MOVE YOUR BOOT FILES TO A SMALLER PARTITION AT THE START OF THE HDD. FORMAT THE HDD AND ALLOW WINDOWS TO CREATE A 100 MB BOOT PARTITION. SHRINK AND MOVE YOUR PARTITIONS WITH GParted... Does anyone have any clue where I totally blew it here? Any help would be huge.

Are you absolutely certain you actually have Windows installed?

It looks like GRUB is attempting to boot your Windows partition.
To put it simply, that's a Linux thing.

You likely had a Linux distribution running on this machine previously, and Windows just isn't quite handling the transition well.

My suggestion? Install a Linux distro after Windows—just a minimal installation on a small partition. That should force GRUB (or LILO) back into the picture. It’s probably your easiest way out.

It’s totally possible that stuff was already baked into the system from the start. I’m having a bit of a hard time following your logic on how you'd even go about fixing it, though. So, what are you saying—like, a fresh install of Windows isn't going to cut it? Are you suggesting I should just grab a Linux distro and dual-boot it alongside my current setup? Maybe throw Linux on the D drive while keeping Windows on the C drive? Honestly, man, I'm pretty lost on all this technical jargon.😉

edit: Every single time I boot this thing up, I get hit with a black screen that just screams... A DISK READ ERROR OCCURRED. PRESS CTRL ALT DEL TO RESTART. It's driving me nuts; I usually have to try rebooting it a few times before it finally decides to cooperate and actually start up.

steelfox36 said:It’s possible that was already pre-installed. To be honest, I didn't quite follow your logic on how exactly you'd go about fixing it. Are you saying a fresh installation of Windows won't cut it? Should I be downloading Linux and running it alongside my current setup? I suppose I could put Linux on the D drive and keep Windows on the C drive, but I'm struggling to wrap my head around the mechanics of it all.😉

I’ve run into a bit of a headache with my PC lately. Every time I hit the power button, I'm greeted by nothing but a black screen and a glaring error message: "A DISK READ ERROR OCCURRED. PRESS CTRL+ALT+DEL TO RESTART." It’s incredibly frustrating. After several failed attempts and a fair amount of luck, I occasionally manage to get the system to boot up properly. Has anyone else dealt with this kind of instability?

Go ahead and install Windows, but make sure to leave a few extra gigabytes of unallocated space on the drive. Why bother rushing the process only to run into storage issues later? It’s better to have that breathing room from the start.
Once that's finished, go ahead and install Linux on that partition.

When you boot up, the system will prompt you to choose whether you want to load Linux or Windows.

I realize this might seem like a bit of a lazy workaround, but since it appears you haven't quite mastered the nuances of Linux yet, I suspect this is the simplest path available to you.

Either find someone who actually knows what they're doing and let them fix it for you. Or just leave it alone.

Matthew Young35 said:Just go ahead and install Windows, but make sure you leave a few gigs of unallocated space on the drive.
Once that's out of the way, you can drop Linux right into that empty spot.

When you reboot, it'll give you the option to pick whether you want to kick off Linux or stick with Windows.

Look, I know it’s a bit of a "band-aid" solution, but since it seems like you're still pretty much a total stranger to how Linux works, I honestly think this is the path of least resistance for you.

Or, honestly? Just hand the machine over to someone who actually knows their way around a terminal and let them handle the heavy lifting.

I'm gonna give that a shot like you suggested, and if I end up hitting a wall, I'll just take it down to a local repair shop. Right now, I'm just waiting for my coffee to kick in so I can actually get this thing powered up. Currently staring at a black screen with absolutely nothing on it. Thanks for reaching out, man.
🙂

I’m looking to set up a dual-boot system with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 on one machine, and I need it to accommodate two different users. Both OSs are 64-bit.

The first user will stick strictly to their own Windows 7 account. The second user, however, needs access to both their Windows 7 account and Ubuntu.
I've got two separate drives in play here, so I attached a photo http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m...temdualizi.png to make things easier to visualize.

Right now, there's just Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 installed, and it's being used by a single person.

What's the best way to handle this installation?

Thanks for the help!

Maybe these instructions will be of some help to you.

Noah Sanchez39 said:Maybe these instructions will help you out.

Thanks, I'll check them out.