PC death

January 1, 2011 4:36 AM

Two PCs have died in our house over that past month. Both were old(ish) and neither was much-loved, so no tragedies (we back them up). I've already replaced one (a 7 year old Dell Dimension 8400) and will eventually replace the other -- a Mac mini. Here's my question: any idea why both would suffer similar deaths? In both cases, they seem to boot up, show the first stage of loading their respective OS, then cycle straight into a non-responsive screen with only a tiny square of light (ala the Matrix). Both machines have surge protectors and the PC had a profusion of anti-whatnot software. Any ideas?
posted by JConUK to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Surge protectors (as in, "power bars") only protect you from major power surges, which are a pretty rare beast if you're connected to modern infrastructure, and a surge protector is a pretty naive approach to data preservation that may be worse than nothing. That said, power spikes happen all the time. Lots of people have crappy, all-over-the-place power to begin with, and when your refrigerator starts up you can probably see the lights in your kitchen flicker. Most appliances just plain old don't care about that, but it's the sort of stress that kills computers over time.

The two things that eat hardware in your average house are dust buildup (resulting in heat stress) and dirty power. You can extend the life of your electronics a pretty astoundingly long time by doing just two things: plug them into a decent mid-range, battery-backed UPS and blow the dust out of them once a year when you do the rest of your spring cleaning.
posted by mhoye at 5:36 AM on January 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

I think it may just be a coincidence. If it were power related I would think either the power supplies or the boards themselves would be fried; either way, you wouldn't get any booting.

My guess is the hard disks on both are probably near the end of their service life and are failing, or some other component(s) is failing and managing a few seconds of normal operation before overheating.
posted by Menthol at 6:45 AM on January 1, 2011

Shutting down shortly after booting, may be a sign of overheating. You've already replaced the Dell, but a good cleanup inside the box might bring it back to life. Be sure to blow out the dust & debris between the fins of any heat sinks, especially the CPU. While you're in there; check for loose connectors on the back of all drives and memory.

I can't help you with the Mini-Mac.

Remember to UNPLUG before exploring...
posted by ScotsLament at 8:28 AM on January 1, 2011

A few thoughts:

Seconding dust/heat, especially for the Dell.You could try dusting it out. Does it have a separate video card? I've seen similar errors when those overheat.

Are your surge protectors old? I believe they contain components that eventually wear out too.

The operating systems start to load? At least in Windows land, if you see the Windows logo, your hard disk is somewhat functional... so it could be operating system or driver corruption... or wonky power supply/memory/mainboard...

The 'for parts' mac mini will fetch you some money on ebay - start it at $0.99 and you might be surprised how high it goes (and regardless of the selling price, getting it to someone who wants it is an awesome form of recycling). If you value your privacy, pull the hard disk and list it as sans hdd. ifixit.com has good guides if you need help with this. Here's one that sold recently on ebay
posted by itheearl at 8:50 AM on January 1, 2011

Response by poster: thanks everone -- I've vacuumed the dust out of my PC in the recent past, and I bought a battery powered UPS with the Dell, none for the mac. I'm going to take them both appart and see -- will let you know if I learn anything.
posted by JConUK at 9:44 AM on January 1, 2011

Home surge protectors also do not protect completely against very large, fast surges, like lightning.
posted by zippy at 1:26 PM on January 1, 2011

I was taught that vacuuming computer innards (and around them) is not a good idea as it builds up electronic charges in the air and is more likely to cause static which can damage electrical components. Not sure if this is still valid or if I was misinformed... can someone verify?
posted by p1nkdaisy at 5:49 AM on January 2, 2011

p1nkdaisy, the vacuum cleaner static theory is still going around, for example here. It may not be every vacuum cleaner that does it, but do you want to use your PC to find out if your vacuum does it?
posted by exphysicist345 at 3:10 PM on January 2, 2011