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Adventures in Computer Repair, Act II :-)

So, I've got this W2K comp., running some CAD software, and it starts screwing up. Like, "Unhandled exception" errors and it dumps all of my work. So, I reinstall the app, and it's still screwing up. So, I decide to finally run some kind of virus scan, and the machine is all infected. Well, since I don't have money to buy antivirus stuff, I decided to just go ahead and reinstall W2K. I'm prepared for this - I have a partition that has _nothing_ but W2K on it, and a little 64MB (yes, sixty-four megabytes) partition right at the boot sector. But still, Windoze is notorious for rewriting the MBR, so I'm a little worried - the FD is having problems (like, it won't boot off it), and I had to burn a CD to boot into Slackware Live - or at least, use its boot kernel, for after W2K trashes LILO.

So, I get all ready to reinstall, and when the setup disk says it's time to reboot, it booted, of all things, LILO! Windows reassigned all of my drives: What used to be "C:", the "BOOT" drive, became "F:," and "E:", where I had W2K, became "C:"; interestingly, "D:" was still "D:".

So I have a clean install, and LILO is still in place - W2K apparently didn't think it was important enough to bother with, or something. :-)

Oh, wait! Just before I start all that S/W install, I decided to rescue a couple of RAM modules from the MB of an office computer I had to fix. I now have 512 MB of RAM, thank you very much. But, while installing this "new" used RAM, I burned my finger on the CPU heat sink. WHAT??!?!? There's NO WAY a heatsink should be that hot. No wonder the computer's acting flaky! I powered it up, and the CPU fan didn't even turn.

So, I put the thing up on the bench, took the fan off the heatsink of the salvage unit, and went to slap it onto the top of the existing heat sink, and the screws weren't long enough - entirely different style of fan.

So I epoxied it. I also re-gooped the old heat sink (with the fan epoxied to it). The clip was a bitch to get loose.

Anyway, I've just reached in and felt my heatsink, and it's cool to the touch. :-) Please cue jokes now. ;-)

And, ironically, I was just looking at the old heatsink that I took the fan off, and it looks like it's exactly the same clip - I could have just swapped out the whole heatsink assembly. Oh, well, at least I have a working computer! :-)

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise
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You don't need money:

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Just an email address.

Reply to
JW

Totally sucks on my computer (Win98SE). Had a lot of trouble even uninstalling it. Put computer in 'safe' mode. Finally got rid of it all - I hope.

Luhan

Reply to
Luhan

Yeo, CPU fans can get pretty bad. Had one where the bronze bearing had worn to about 150% of its original size!

Also you'll see cheap video cards or motherboiard chipsets with very tiny, very very crappy fans. The fans can wear out in just a few months. If it's your lucky day, the fan will get very noisy before it completely fails.

While you're at it, look over all the other fans, especially the ones in the power supply. If it's more than three years old you might consider replacing it with a new, quieter, maybe thermally-controlled fan. They're really cheap on eBay. If you want it to last a long time, look for ones that have two ball bearings, not one or two cheapie bronze oilite bearings. BTW I've seen a few fans labeled "ball bearing", which, if you peel off that sticker, you can see a brass bearing underneath.

Reply to
Ancient_Hacker

Reminds me of a PC I had in the office. For some reason Win NT worked fine, but Win95 crashed after a few minutes. When I opened the case I found the cause: the cooler had completely fallen of the Pentium Pro CPU.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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Reply to
Nico Coesel

| | There's your problem >------------+

Nobody should still be running that unstable pile of garbage.

Reply to
JW

formatting link

Even better

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

I agree I took off Norton anti virus and went to AVG. I've been running it for years, never had a problem. Best of all it's free.

Regards, Chance

Reply to
Chance

*for non-commercial use.

Seriously though, AVG is a nice little anti-virus. Unlike norton which is a serious resource hog.

Reply to
Mark Fortune

Thanks, I'll check it out. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Here are some links to free utilities for personal use. BTW, Zone Alarm no longer supports older OS, but I have the last version that did.

formatting link 

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Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I disagree. Win98SE was the best of the bunch of Win 9x OSes. (95 thru ME). There are some PCs around that don't have the grunt to run XP but are otherwise still useful. For those who don't want to, or can't due to program incompatibility, to run Linux, Win98SE is the best choice. (Especially with the 98SE 'unofficial service pack' that can be found via Google).

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Shaun.
Reply to
~misfit~

"~misfit~" wrote in news:ect57b$2q8l$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.de:

Well, there's the problem. Win 98SE is no longer supported by MS, meaning there are no patches, no fixes, no security updates. How ya gonna keep your OS secure?

Reply to
Jim Land

Win NT has the 'halt' command to help prevent the CPU from idling at 10,000 revs (simplified analogy) whereas 95 does not. Therefore the CPU is constantly running hotter with 95, spinning it's wheels even when not doing anything.

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Shaun.
Reply to
~misfit~

Agreed - Win98SE was definitely the least of those evils. Win95 OSR2 is not bad either (relatively) - I still have it running on an old machine.

You keep your Win98SE machine secure the way you keep any windows machine secure, and it has nothing to do with service packs or patches (which are about as useful as adding more duct tape to your cardboard shack). You use a hardware firewall on your internet connection, make sure your email passes through *proper* filtering, use any browser other than IE and any email program other than OE or O, and use some common sense.

Reply to
David Brown

Good program, BUT, from the license agreement: "You must not use the program in a network or on more than one computer." Since I have three computers on a home network, this would violate the agreement. Avast does not have this limitation.

Reply to
JW

Not difficult at all, mine runs behind a Linux firewall with M$OS virus, spyware, adware, etc., protection. It is really fast on that old 800 with

512 MB of RAM. 
--
 JosephKK
 Gegen dummheit kampfen die Gotter Selbst, vergebens.  
  --Schiller
Reply to
joseph2k

Exactly.

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Shaun.
Reply to
~misfit~

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