PC Woes. AGAIN.

[jon_chaisson]

So what do you think--motherboard, low RAM or power source? Or something else?

Last night when trying to open MS Word, the thing froze up (along with pretty much everything else), which has been an increasing problem lately with other programs, more often than not with IE. Tried to close all programs...managed to close IE without a problem, but MS WOrd refused to close. Tried to close down the PC, that didn't want to work either, after an amount of time. Decided to do a hard-dump, which, in retrospect, may not have been the best of ideas.

Tried rebooting. I get as far as the big "e" (I have an e-Machine so that's what you see) and the selection for Boot Menu (BOOT Menu: [F10], BIOS Settings: [F2]). Aaaaaaaand, that's where it stops. Neither function key responds. During all of this, the fan starts, but quiets down (and I think stops) about three seconds later. At the moment I've just got it on, just in case *something* happens, but I'm not expecting anything.

[EDIT: Okay, update on that--after about 10 or so minutes, it finally decided to reboot, started up Windows XP, and I think it did a VERY SLOW self-fixing and boot-up, and it looks okay now. Not sure if I fully trust it, but this is a good sign that I should do another backup, just in case!]

Any idea of what happened and how I can get it up and running again? In particular, I'm curious as to why certain programs get all wonky mid-process and use up all my virtual memory. The interesting thing is that my Norton suggests that I'm low on RAM and probably need to add it if I can. I'd have to pop open the PC to see if I have room for that, but I'm sure I do. Still...think this low RAM might be it? Diagnostics say I only have 512Mb, which I'm sure is lower than it really has any right to be.

Which brings me to the question, as I rarely if ever pop open a PC to look at it--I'm guessing that this addition of RAM would entail cracking open the PC itself to add a RAM chip/card/whatever? And I'm sure I'd have room for it, as everything I've added to this PC has pretty much been software or drivers.

Thanks ahead of time!

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

I don't think adding RAM will help. Sounds like the motherboard is tits up, based on the combination of things. I mean, maybe it's a bad RAM chip, and throwing in a new one is pretty cheap, so that might be a good place to start (to find out what you need for your machine go to crucial.com (yes, that site always put "U Got the Look" into my head) and use the memory advisor tool, then order that RAM from a site like newegg where it will be cheapest). But the "not powering up" is the same thing that happened to my eMachines last year and replacing the motherboard was what finally fixed it. If your motherboard isn't seeing your RAM properly that could cause everything to grind to a halt.

Norton likely isn't helping. It's a massive system resources hog. But I don't think it's the prime culprit here. I'd say it's time to go shopping for a new machine. But remember to pull the old HD out of your old machine and you can slave it into the new one.