All kinds of news, and no new posts on the Chronicle…. What’s going on?
Answer: Computer problems. My Dell Inspiron 1501 is on the blink. Lately, it’s been shutting off unexpectedly. Not shutting down — shutting off. One second it’s on, and I’m in the middle of typing something, and the next second — POOF! — it’s off. Completely off. Totally off. Kind of disconcerting. Especially when it won’t boot back up again… for a couple days. Then, one day, you press the power button and it boots right up as if nothing ever happened.
So, a new laptop is in our near future. In fact, it’s being assembled now and will ship soon. A powerful motherboard from a pcb solutions company will be installed in my new computer so it should be able to handle my everyday tasks easily.
Well, now I’m getting excited to receive my new computer. I can’t wait to use it for my blog. In the meantime, if I go a couple days without posting, you’ll know why.
Even when you post things like “nothing new to say – what do you want to talk about?”, it’s interesting how that gets things going again. Like other blogs, it’s nice that you share links to each other (though I hope you’ll add a link to Emerge for others to enjoy as I do now) – that way we have another outlet during the “computer blues”!
Jon — I could have sworn that I had Emerge’s blog on my blogroll. Thanks for pointing out that it’s not. I’ve added it.
Isn’t this two laptops in about two years? Me thinks you need to invest in a desktop.
This is why there are “Geeks” who repair PC’s ! Could be power supply or a fan that quit working? Cheaper than buying a new one.
I had similar problems with a Dell Inspiron. Taking some compressed air and blowing the dust out of the fan openings helped a great deal. Sounds like it’s overheating and shutting off as a defense mechanism. Probably a dust buildup. Of course, a dead fan would have the same symptoms.
MAC
I too have a Dell Inspiron laptop that used to do those weird things when it got hot and the cooling fan worked overtime. My solution was to buy a Rocketfish (brand) laptop cooling stand which is an auxiliary fan run via the UCB port and it works so well that the internal fan sudden runs and I haven’t had any problems since. I recall it was like $30 at Best Buy.
replace sudden with seldom…
Replaced the power supply — $100 — didn’t fix the problem.
It shuts off regardless of whether the computer is hot or cold.
Need to run Microsoft and Adobe (for PC) applications, so decided against Mac.
Could keep fiddling with the thing, putting more money into it, like taking it to a repair shop, replacing the memory, buying a cooling pad, etc., in hopes of finding the thing that’s causing the trouble. But for just a little more money, I can get a new laptop that has more memory, storage, processing power, and a 2-year warranty. Sometimes it’s just easier….
This is the only Dell laptop with which I’ve had any problems. The last laptop died a premature death because my son poured soda on it, if you’ll recall. It’s not my intention to buy a new laptop every two years. It’s just one of those things….
This is why there are so many “refurbished Dell’s for sale!
A lot of times a problem like this is due to software problems but more probably malware that can’t be detected due to the crippling affect it has on detection software.
If you knew how to replace the hard drive with one that is clean you would notice and see the difference between the two drives’ functions.
What I do is I find used computers with hard drives similar to the computer I am using and that the user is selling for cheap and buy it. I reformat the drive clean and use it as a back up in case I get “infected” with something. Then working from the clean drive I am able to clean the infected drive by importing what needs to be done. This has saved me a good chunk of change. I’ve had this particular computer now for about 6 years and through several malware infections which I was able to reverse.
To be clear, I mean that I remove and replace the problem drive with the other drive to assess if the drive is the problem. Usually it is the drive that is the problem.
Shoulda got a new Macbook Pro. You know you can install Windows on those right?