Last week I noticed that reading stuff off my 129 gig Western Digital hard drive took longer than usual. Three days ago I noticed that the drive clicked loudly when I started reading off of it. A day after that I lost my system partition's boot sector and had to do a reinstall of Windows XP. Realizing what was happening I rushed out and got myself a brand new hard drive. Good thing I did too. I was transfering the last few files off of it when it just stopped working. The files weren't anything important; I didn't want to have to download them again.

Now I've got a 250 gigabyte hard drive that's brand new (out of it's plastic shell). I'll probably open the old one and decorate the walls with its platters…

Anyone else have stories to share about their computers when they fail? :)

I have come to despise Western Digital (WD) hard drives. I had an 80gb drive that came with my desktop and it died after about a year. I replaced it with a Maxtor 200GB and then it died in a few months. Sooo, I went back to my tried and true favorite: Seagate!

I used to back up everything to CD but I've gotten lazy. I just use a spare pc to keep the majority of my info backed up and leave it off until I need it.

I've also become a huge fan of thumb drives! 8D

I plugged in a usb cable into one of those handy, dandy USB ports. When I took the cable out, the USB port came out along with it. Now there's a small hole on the bottom of my computer. Other wonderful things toward my trusty little Sony Vaio is how the monitor broke a while ago and is now just a flat screen without a stand. It's resting on top of my brown lamp and some old Webster's Dictionary. It usually falls over.

Ah, cosmetic changes matter not. Other things wrong with my computer would be the way I can't access my Control Panel. Or maybe the way I can't start my computer without a disk. Those “NTLDR is missing” errors are also a handful that take a while to fix.

Random DLLs crashing everytime I click on a program? Yup. The fact that Windows Media Player mysteriously crashes taking down everything with it is also another thing. Maybe it's just me, but I hate the way I have to keep Firefox, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks open because if I close them, I can't play with them anymore without having to turn off my computer. Trust me, turning off and turning on my computer is a bitch. I did forget to mention that I have to be in “Safe Mode” always?

Aside all these flaws, my computer works like a charm….sort of.

My boyfriend's computer caught on fire.

Like…burst into flames.

After doing a shed load of editing on my latest college film my computer crashed and it took me hours to re-do all the work i lost.

Terminal
I plugged in a usb cable into one of those handy, dandy USB ports. When I took the cable out, the USB port came out along with it. Now there's a small hole on the bottom of my computer. Other wonderful things toward my trusty little Sony Vaio is how the monitor broke a while ago and is now just a flat screen without a stand. It's resting on top of my brown lamp and some old Webster's Dictionary. It usually falls over.

Ah, cosmetic changes matter not. Other things wrong with my computer would be the way I can't access my Control Panel. Or maybe the way I can't start my computer without a disk. Those “NTLDR is missing” errors are also a handful that take a while to fix.

Random DLLs crashing everytime I click on a program? Yup. The fact that Windows Media Player mysteriously crashes taking down everything with it is also another thing. Maybe it's just me, but I hate the way I have to keep Firefox, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks open because if I close them, I can't play with them anymore without having to turn off my computer. Trust me, turning off and turning on my computer is a bitch. I did forget to mention that I have to be in “Safe Mode” always?

Aside all these flaws, my computer works like a charm….sort of.

Ya know, it'd probably be a lot better if ya build or get a new computer than continuing ta go through all yer crap. Cause it sounds like yer computer is trying to tell you that it's days are done, even if ya take it to a shop.

Still, a long time ago I had ta use computers that somehow managed ta get into our house. It was a family computer but they always had trouble. That is…until I found out that “someone” (namely the only man in the house at the time) was looking at porn on the internet and not being very bright about it. Never could solve that problem…well, I did. I got a costum built computer from my dad and he works charmingly for me. Unfortunately the hand-me-down monitor I had decided to die on me while I'm here in GA. So I can't use my Drake until I return to TX. Which sucks. Still, living with my techno-guru of a father has advantages. Keheheh

My cat threw up on top of my monitor while i was using photoshop, i used to have 2 or 3 cats sleeping up there at any given time, anyway it let out this blinding flash of white light and shorted out. luckily i was able to plug in a spare monitor and continue like nothing had happened !!! and the cat was fine btw.

Could I get some help pls? Tryin' to figure out what to replace in my PC before anything fails miserably, looking to identify the noise it makes on youtube but (of course) no video seems to feature that one, while clicking and grinding sounds are in every f video. So maybe someone has experience with it. My PC occasionally, sometimes more, than other times starts making this bootup sound, similar to when you turn a PC on, you can hear it getting real worked up and then BAM: a single loud noise (that reminds me of something hitting against something else inside) when for a moment it looks like softwares freeze. But right after it carries on. I listened to the “click of death” videos, but none of those feature that bootup sound, just constant clicking. I still think it's either the Hard Drive or the fan, but it'd be nice to know which one or if something else causes it.

Hmmm yeah could be one of the HD mechanisms, because you're experiencing a hiccup in operations and then it carries on again, seems like the arm could be hitting another component or making a noise when it resets after scanning memory. Perhaps some tension in the mechanism or wear. Your suspicion about it being the HD seems most likely to me since it's doing “booting up” noises before the abrupt sound, which sounds like disk reading to me. Unfortunately this stuff does wear down after a time.

If you're concerned about the fans and want to sanity check that first before getting a new HD installed, I highly recommend getting some canned air from your local computer/office store, unplugging your PC and opening up the case, and blasting all dustbunnies out, cotton swabs can also loosen up some of the stuff that's wedged into the fan filters (I pull a small amount of the cotton off for more precision/less cotton to snag on metal edges) and make it easier to blow out.

Figured. Thanks for the tip. I'll take a closer look and see if it's really the HDD, hopefully not due to the fan malfunctioning. I think I can replace a HDD, although I doubt there will be a quality one among the cheapest and if I'd spend more on it, I might as well just buy a used laptop for the fiancée and use her PC as she suggested. Either way, we have to minimize the expenses, we practically have no savings, with 3 months to go 'til the wedding. Thanks again.

My biggest computer hardware failure was once foolishly leaving my computer plugged into the wall during a lightning storm . . . completely fried my computer; it was deader than a doorknob; had to get a whole new one altogether. Many, many, many years ago this was, which is why now I keep my computer plugged into a surge protector when I'm using it. I do try to unplug it anyway when such storms blow through, but now my current computer is at a point where there's almost no battery life left, even when the computer simply idles while unplugged.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Could I get some help pls? Tryin' to figure out what to replace in my PC before anything fails miserably, looking to identify the noise it makes on youtube but (of course) no video seems to feature that one, while clicking and grinding sounds are in every f video. So maybe someone has experience with it. My PC occasionally, sometimes more, than other times starts making this bootup sound, similar to when you turn a PC on, you can hear it getting real worked up and then BAM: a single loud noise (that reminds me of something hitting against something else inside) when for a moment it looks like softwares freeze. But right after it carries on. I listened to the “click of death” videos, but none of those feature that bootup sound, just constant clicking. I still think it's either the Hard Drive or the fan, but it'd be nice to know which one or if something else causes it.

My last computer from 2009 did this before I decided to retire it and purchase a new one. The hardware from over a decade ago could no longer keep up with the speeds required of the present day. Even watching YouTube would cause the fan to flare up and I could hardly hear the conversations of podcasts I was streaming.


The best advice is going to be what Windows kept telling me as I was trying to upgrade to Windows 10 from Vista, “It is highly recommended that you buy a new computer”.

Modern computers are hundreds of times faster, store a lot more memory, have a lot more RAM than older computers at about a tenth of the price for the same specs from back then. I even bought a basic US$109 refurbished PC on Amazon solely to watch DVDs and it had similar specs to my “2009 super computer”.

Back everything up with an external hard drive, save up for a decent computer that you can use in the future if anything decides to hit the fan.

Yeah, I don't know if that's realistic for me ‘til the end of the year. I’ll just have to go with a quick solution of replacing the HDD if it dies before that. But on the long-term it won't do much. I think my setup is pretty okay, 7 years old but can still run some not-too-demanding games from a few years back and it only fails me when I try to open unity models over 9-10 gb. Still, it'll be a good investment to find a PC that isn't likely to die in a year or two. Just not at the moment. Too bad everything got more expensive. Our rent, some debts to pay… except our salaries. With the wedding expenses coming up, I'll be happy if I can buy the models I need to work with (for my comic) this spring and summer.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
My biggest computer hardware failure was once foolishly leaving my computer plugged into the wall during a lightning storm

I did that with one of my comps in the past :(
It needed the motherboard replaced, but after that it was good!

Another time I was wearing a woollen jumper and a fur hat AND patting a cat while fixing a comp… The comp was full open. That's like doing open heart surgery while eating a sandwich and sneezing LOL!
Needless to say the comp was not happy… The hard drive was spiked. I had to spend a week with high level professional recovery software to get everything off it and restore it.

InkyMoondrop
Too bad everything got more expensive. Our rent, some debts to pay… except our salaries. With the wedding expenses coming up, I'll be happy if I can buy the models I need to work with (for my comic) this spring and summer.

My advice is to go android. Get a second hand tab S tablet with a good pen and get the right software.

I still use my computer for a lot of work like my graphic design, photo editing, writing etc, but all my comic stuff is done on my tablet and has been for years with no issues:
The benefits are that you biggest expense is just the tablet itself, NOT all the other software and hardware to go along with it, and if something goes wrong or whatever it's SUPER easy to have your work backed up to the cloud somewhere and easy to transition to a new tablet if needed!

Ozoneocean wrote:

I was wearing a woollen jumper and a fur hat AND patting a cat while fixing a comp… The comp was full open. That's like doing open heart surgery while eating a sandwich and sneezing LOL!

That's something the navy would do.

Once upon a time, while still studying, my old computer failed in a comic-like way. It would run for five to ten minutes then suddenly black out and a wisp of blue smoke would come out of its case. That of course happened when I had lots of deadlines to meet. So I called a professional computer nerd who explained that something must have overheated or a capacitor must have burst, and anyway I should get a new computer, because a machine running on Windoze 2000 was so… well 2000. (The then-current version was called XP and had just been on the market for a couple of years; it's that long ago.) I gazed into the void (translate as “looked into my bank account”) and forced him to sell me a new main board. He protested, and said this would never work, there's no way this could work, not without formatting and re-installing anything, and whatnot.
I just ripped out the old board, put in the new one, and it worked. Also I cut a hole into the casing and inserted an extra fan.

I've still got this thing, it still works just fine. On the same Windows 2000 installed in not very long after 2000. I very occasionally use it for recording music and playing old DOS games.

This would in all likelihood never work today, least of all with modern technology!

——-

Btw., NEVER EVER move anything to a USB stick! Copy it, then check if the copy arrived in one piece. I used to have a stick that would just eat files, never to be seen again, while at the same time pretending to work just fine. You could copy (or move) anything onto it, the computer would say it worked, but the file wouldn't show up anywhere. Vanished without a trace.
I looked it up, and apparently this kind of thing may happen because you can only write and overwrite anything on these solid state chips or whatever they're called a limited number of times - tens of thousands of times or something, but still limited, meaning that USB sticks have a kind of expiry date. SSD hard drives too? - No idea, but I've been extra-wary about storing media I don't understand ever since, making backups of backups just in case.
Anyway, I thought this was just typical! How could I ever have thought USB sticks were for transporting files, copying and removing them all the time?!

Three words: clicks of doom. That's why I have stuffed across numerous thumb drives and no external hard drive.

Had an external hard drive. I had everything on it. I'd back up stuff when it was finished but this was a lot of garbage in progress stuff that I used everyday. All the time. Then there were the clicks. If I had known what they meant I could have hooked it up and backed up everything, but I didn't and I lost a lot. Two pages with tons of graphic work and composition gone from one of my comics. It was like loosing something very dear to me that just could not be replaced.
Disc data recovery is a thing but unless you have a budget like a US government agency you can't do it. Were these files worth a $1k ? I'm good at accepting loss. Hurts a lot but I hurt all the time anyway.


Clicks of death. Any hard drive, hear them and be afraid. Very afraid.

I also had the smoke from the back of a laptop. It was bad. No saving it as the motherboard fried. Cost analysis? What's better fix it or upgrade? I dipped into some savings and did the upgrade. Took days to get rid of that burning smell.

Then there were the broken screens on the laptop before that. It was a wide screen monster that was great for movies and graphics work. But it weighed a ton and few bags fit it. Broke and replaced the screen twice. Found a neat step by step YouTube video. First screen was $50. Next time it was over $100. Then I dropped the laptop and it broke again. I had a lot of pirated movie files along with all the torrenting programs. I deleted it all. Didn't save anything except my free copy of Photoshop CS2 from when Adobe gave it out as freeware for that short time. They've since deactivated all the licenses so that version won't work with the license if you transfer the program to a new computer. So I'm back to Photoshop 7.

All three of my computers currently have trouble loading the BIOS on startup. It takes about 3 cycles of turn-it-on, turn-it-off, turn-it-on-again before I get a normal boot. I think it might have to do with replacing that little battery that sits on the motherboard. Has anybody else had this problem?

fallopiancrusader wrote:
All three of my computers currently have trouble loading the BIOS on startup. It takes about 3 cycles of turn-it-on, turn-it-off, turn-it-on-again before I get a normal boot. I think it might have to do with replacing that little battery that sits on the motherboard. Has anybody else had this problem?

That sounds like a motherboard issue. You can maybe find the exact same models of motherboard out there, but it's a shit of a job to get everything off the only ones and stick the stuff onto new ones.

You replace the whole board rather than fix bits… Though it would be worth asking an expert on a forum or reddit if you can find one.

You can also try and update the bios.