[wakeride74]

My wife and I have a fairly basic Gateway that we bought about 3 years ago or so. Yesterday it would not come on, I turned it on and the Gateway logo flashed for a sec and then the screen went dark. I tried escape, enter, ctrl+alt+del but nothing seemed to work. There was also a noise coming from the PC, kind of like a med-high pitched hum. There was a cursor in the upper left and when I tried to do something it acted like it was thinking but just remained black. I checked connections, powered everyting off and on several times but still nothing.

I'm thinking I may need to take it in to BB or CC for some kid to fix it but thought I'd check here first for recs.

On a side note we have been wanting to get a new computer as ours has grown to be very slow (even though the memory is only at half capacity) but if we did we'd still have to recover and transfer all our pictures, music, etc. etc. Is is maybe time for an upgrade?

Any advice on either question would be appreciated. We are very basic and just use it for music, pictures, and internet.

 

[Zodduska]

I would guess it's either the power supply, motherboard or RAM that went bad. Your best bet would be to have it looked at then weigh the cost of repair vs the cost of a new computer, it should be less to repair but the money is probably better spent on a new pc if the repair is anywhere near half the cost of a new pc.

If you do decide to get a new pc you should be able to transfer your stuff without fixing the old computer by removing the old hard drive and installing it in the new computer, unless you already have it backed up to external storage.

 

[wakeride74]

Well I took it in yesterday and of course it was able to power up fine so now it may be the monitor. Taking both in today to have them looked at. The guy there said that My music is taking up most of the space (surprise surprise) and he didn't have much good to say about Norton.

While I was there I was doing some browsing and was drawn to a nice MAC they had for about $1100. I've never really worked with one before so can anyone tell me if there is an advantage? Would it be a worthy upgrade?

 

[Oxyjin]

I say to get your PC looked at before you upgrade. Usually doing a fresh install of XP clears any slow downs and problems that you come with normal computer wear. (viruses/malware etc.) I have a few friends with macs but I don't see it as anything better than an ordinary pc but some people might say otherwise. Supposedly its a better experience for those of us that just do basic computing (surf, email and the like) but isn't to friendly on upgrading.

 

[MusicallySilent]

Most of the people who switch to macs for general computing seem to enjoy it, however some dislike it and switch back. About macs not being upgradeable. I have a friend who has a old powerbook g4 that is 2-3 years old probably a 1.5ghz single core, and he runs leopard and adobe products on it flawlessly, apple seems to pay a lot of attention to older hardware and keeping it running smoothly. However if you need to run Games or CAD you may notice issues with the lack of upgradeability. Another option is a PC running some distro of Linux, with windows for the bare minimum needs of windows, Games, CAD and stuff that doesn't like OS X/Linux

 

[olblueyez]

Try booting from a windows cd as well.

 

[Ub3rMario]

I would think something is wrong with the RAM as mentioned earlier. I've had a few friends who somehow fried a piece of ram and then their comps wouldn't start either or would attempt to start and then just get stuck in a restarting loop.

 

[wakeride74]

I'm back up and running... must have had something to do with an improper shutdown according to what I was told. So no upgrades for me... holding off until I really need to... dammit

 

[ozz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wakeride74 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well I took it in yesterday and of course it was able to power up fine so now it may be the monitor. Taking both in today to have them looked at. The guy there said that My music is taking up most of the space (surprise surprise) and he didn't have much good to say about Norton. While I was there I was doing some browsing and was drawn to a nice MAC they had for about $1100. I've never really worked with one before so can anyone tell me if there is an advantage? Would it be a worthy upgrade?

Did this a couple of years ago and never looked back also if you feel the need
you could install VM Fusion on a Mac and install XP or Vista and run both
osx and windows save old machine wipe clean and install Linux and have it all.

 

[DemonicLemming]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ub3rMario /img/forum/go_quote.gif I would think something is wrong with the RAM as mentioned earlier. I've had a few friends who somehow fried a piece of ram and then their comps wouldn't start either or would attempt to start and then just get stuck in a restarting loop.

Bad memory would (should) cause the computer to run a series of error beeps. I've never had a hardware problem that kept a computer from booting that didn't have an accompanying series of "You broke something" beeps.

 

[milkpowder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wakeride74 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm back up and running... must have had something to do with an improper shutdown according to what I was told. So no upgrades for me... holding off until I really need to... dammit

Improper shutdown?

Looks like the computer service guys had just as much idea about what went wrong as you and me

Just out of interest, what was this "cursor" that appeared on the top left hand corner of the screen? Was it by any chance an underscore (_)?

 

[frozenice]

Buying an external hard drive and backing up your music and pictures is always a good thing to do.

 

[milkpowder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frozenice /img/forum/go_quote.gif Buying an external hard drive and backing up your music and pictures is always a good thing to do.

Actually, buy multiple HDDs for backup purposes. I was foolish enough to only have one back up and through one unfortunate event after another, I managed to lose 60GB of music + album art which I had meticulously added for my 330GB+ library. I've learned from my mistakes

 

[dazzer1975]

re external hdd's, definitely, id advise a nas box connected to your router with multiple hdd's piggybacked to the nas.

as for backups, always always always divide your total storage space by at least two to ensure you have at least 1 full copy of everything on your system.

 

[Ub3rMario]

well congrats on your comp not dying haha. I personally just have two hard drives on my comp, one for system stuff and one for data/music. Right now i don't have a large enough library to fill so i think it works fine. If my system crashes, i'm pretty sure the music hard drive will remain fine.