Computer FUBAR'd

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

It runs from the battery fine

You said the battery won't charge. There is circuitry in the battery that tells the computer of the state of charge. Quite often this is goosed. I take it from what you saying you can charge the battery elsewhere?

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

It runs from the battery fine

??

So it's not charging the battery... yet it runs from the battery fine?

[yorkie_chris]

Yup, basically I can remove the AC power (well DC as it goes through a transformer) and it runs like normal, screen dims to power save setting, battery doesn't drop any faster than normal.

But when I plug it back in, the icon on the taskbar changes back to "AC power" rather than "AC power, charging" and the charge indicator stays on whatever it's on.

I think the 4 orange flashes, one green flash is some sort of fault code.

Will try another battery when I can find one.

[TEC]

Dunno what some people do with PC/Laptops Well aware the battery is fecked on my old laptop (own fault for not charging it properly) but it still works after 8 years and I have a PC thats older and its still ok (though has had a new PSU).

Most of the reasons PC/Laptops start to run slow are simple house keeping, you may delete stuff but thats only half of it, when was the last time you emptied the recycle bin, defragged the HDD and ran a check disc Taking the lid off PCs and cleaning out all the dust helps fans running (laptops not so easy). Discharging and fully recharging a laptops battery tend to help keep them in better shape. Not downloading gigabites of rubbish from the web helps as well, you may have started with a 100+ Gb HDD but it soon fills up with all the music etc, the operating system needs space to be able to work so if you don't really need to files on the PC/laptop save them off to either an external drive or burn to CD/DVD's, you'll be glad you did when the PC/laptop dies

Ditto TEC. it's the maintenance of the things that people seem to forget. Would you let your Bike's go unserviced for 7 years?
Some things to watch out for though is downloading things from say Lime Wire, or any other DOWNLOAD site, Napster etc.. Can lead to lots of Viruses, and Adware, SPyware, and other little crappy progs that seem to take up resources. Couple of good programs to download that are FREE are, AD-Aware, by Lavasoft. This will check for spy and ad aware, and also SPYBOT. Also free and another checker for spyware adware. These can search your drive and identify anything that loks to be dodgy. Another thing to do, instead of just deleting the files you don't need, have people checked to see if the program has an UNINSTALL. Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and see if somethings in there are not used and can be UNINSTALLED.
Also, As TEC said Defrag and scandisk of the drivers is a good ting. ALSO, Keep your Virus software up to date. NO NEED to spend lots on Nortons, Symantecs stuff, you can use AVG free, and also FIREWALL stuff too. SYGATE Persoanl Firewall is good, and there is comodo too, that gets good reviews, All free!!!!! Check them out. Symantec stuff tends to be resource hungry too, and there should be a subscription fee too, so I stay away from that!

[Luckypants]

Errr I am a computer geek, it's my job. I am in fact a performance specialist for mainframe systems (amongst my many skills). Keeping my PC in tip top shape is second nature.

Last cleanup? Last week. Last Defrag? Saturday. Hoovering out of dust? Last month Swap file defrag? (why feccking windoze the only opsys that handles paging so badly the pagefile needs defragging and the only one that really realy needs it)...... About a month ago. It's feckered, it's been staggering for at least 18 months

What do I do to my PC? Use the damn thing hard.

Laptop power pack has just given up the ghost on me So can't use the laptop at the mo. However, I do have a backup PC in the back bedroom and just managed to get it all hooked up to the "freshly re-installed" wireless network last night ... in fact, it was so much easier to do that in Linux than it was in Windows (with stepsons PC). In fact, I'm quite pleased with my PCLinux installation, so next time the laptop is in need of a re-install it might be getting a little treat (depending on availability of linux drivers)

Just threaten to reprogramme it with a rather large axe - or hit it with a hammer!
Hey - works for me.

I mean, I only threw one computer out of one window that was on the third floor! Now they're all scared of me.

[Luckypants]

Wow, big up to Dell. My system was dispatched yesterday, the day after ordering. This is despite making certain customisations from their standard build.

K - As soon as it arrives, I'll give it a stern warning about it's future behaviour while shaking an axe at the screen.

[TEC]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

Errr I am a computer geek,...

I did sort of guessed that from ....

Originally Posted by Luckypants

... CPU cooling fan is fecked, took the covers off ....

My post was a sort of general thing to others who always look in hoping for fixes cause their PC/laptop is starting to do similar things without actually asking for help, we just know they are lurking out there