- Nov 28, 2004
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My boss, our CEO, calls me this morning and tells me that his PC is VERY slow, slower than a crawl. He tried rebooting (at least he tried something!) but that didn't help. I figured spyware, and went to his office to check it out.
Turns out, everything in his system was fine, excpet it was very quiet -- none of the fans were working! His exhaust fan, the fan on the power supply itself, and the heatsink fan were all dead to the world. The grill on the back of the PSU was hot, and I mean hot, to the touch. I opened up the case, and the warm air just oozed out :disgust:
I figured it had to be a power supply issue, since the fan on the power supply itself was impacted, so it wasn't likely to be a MOBO short. I performed a temporary power supply bypass by pulling a PSU from another Compaq box and hooking it up to his. Viola! All fans sprang to life and were fine.
Clearly seems to be a case of one of the rails dying (the 3.3v rail, perhaps?). The only question I have, however, is that I thought more than a couple items pulled from multiple rails, so shouldn't something else have been causing trouble too? Then again, the PC is nearly 4 years old, so maybe most of the items: CPU, hard drive, AGP, RAM, pull strictly off the 12v and 5v rails, and it was the 3.3v rail that went belly up? I'm just looking for some general thoughts on this.
For my nice repalcement 250W PSU (which may be part of the problem in the first place), Compaq is kind enough to charge $242. This is the second PSU that's gone belly up in the past 9 months for this model PC, though the first was far more dramatic. That one brought sparks, black smoke, and an awful smell to it's wake.
I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is trying to run a one person IT department and having to deal with garbage like this that you can't remedy on the spot.
My boss, our CEO, calls me this morning and tells me that his PC is VERY slow, slower than a crawl. He tried rebooting (at least he tried something!) but that didn't help. I figured spyware, and went to his office to check it out.
Turns out, everything in his system was fine, excpet it was very quiet -- none of the fans were working! His exhaust fan, the fan on the power supply itself, and the heatsink fan were all dead to the world. The grill on the back of the PSU was hot, and I mean hot, to the touch. I opened up the case, and the warm air just oozed out :disgust:
I figured it had to be a power supply issue, since the fan on the power supply itself was impacted, so it wasn't likely to be a MOBO short. I performed a temporary power supply bypass by pulling a PSU from another Compaq box and hooking it up to his. Viola! All fans sprang to life and were fine.
Clearly seems to be a case of one of the rails dying (the 3.3v rail, perhaps?). The only question I have, however, is that I thought more than a couple items pulled from multiple rails, so shouldn't something else have been causing trouble too? Then again, the PC is nearly 4 years old, so maybe most of the items: CPU, hard drive, AGP, RAM, pull strictly off the 12v and 5v rails, and it was the 3.3v rail that went belly up? I'm just looking for some general thoughts on this.
For my nice repalcement 250W PSU (which may be part of the problem in the first place), Compaq is kind enough to charge $242. This is the second PSU that's gone belly up in the past 9 months for this model PC, though the first was far more dramatic. That one brought sparks, black smoke, and an awful smell to it's wake.
I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is trying to run a one person IT department and having to deal with garbage like this that you can't remedy on the spot.
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