Hardware Troubles

So I was helping out a friend this weekend work through some hardware issues, and I thought I might take a moment to discuss some of the things you can do when you computer just goes cap putt on you. Here are some of the symptoms, maybe your monitor comes on but you don't see anything on the screen or maybe your computer just restarts for no reason and you can't figure out why it keeps happening.

Lets take the monitor example first, well to begin we should rule out the obvious.....Is the monitor plug into the power outlet, is the monitor cable to the computer plugged in a secure?
Is the computer on? ...These are the no brainers, if you've tried all of those and still can't get anything to come up here are some possible solutions. First thing is that it may be a bad cable that you have connecting from your computer to the monitor, so the solution.....try a different cable. After you have done that and still no Dice then things get a little more technical. If your warranty is up and you feel comfortable opening up the box to your computer then try this solution. It's called checking to see is your Graphics card is seated. Well you ask how to I know which one is my graphics card? Generally speaking you can look down into the machine and see the big fan that is pointing straight up at you that is your computer processor under that fan not look to the south of that big fan you'll see a bunch of slots. This are your slots for you peripheral cards. Usually the one closest to the processor is your graphic card and if you still in doubt the card will usually have the brand name of the maker on the card somewhere. So check to make sure you have the right card. Now when a graphics card is "Seated" it is correctly placed inside the slot that it goes into, sometimes what happens is that the graphics card will get tugged or bumped and it will come out of that slot a little. Just push down on the card and if it goes down further and pops into placed then that was the problem and your card was properly seated. But if it doesn't move at all then it could be something else.

However if you've tried the cable and you know you monitors good and you've just tried Seating the card and it's already seated well, then there are only two possible solutions. Buy a new graphics card or buy a new computer.

Lets move on to the second example for want of time here. Of your computer just restarts for no reason it could be one of four issues. 1. your hard drive is bad. 2. you motherboard is bad. 3. your power supply is bad. and 4. Your Operating System Software needs to be reinstalled. Now all of these are potentially bad, but you probably guessed that. Unfortunately is this case there is only one way to rule out any of these possibilities, you need someone who knows how to check and verify each system, so call of you geek of a friend or put something on my tech forum and maybe you problem can be resolved easily and maybe you just have to buy a new computer.

Many people just go out and buy a new computer when they don't have too, and on the other hand many people don't buy a new computer even though they should. Just try to evaluate whats happening to your computer, some things are fixable and some thing are not, and don't forget you can always Webit and find out what the Internet has to say about your problem, I can guarantee that no matter the problem someone else out there has had it also.

Happy Computing!