Computer Troubles

[Rutabaga]

My shiny new computer, which is only 3 months old, died on me this morning. It refused to boot up and just beeped at me. I spent almost 2 hours on the phone with Dell, and finally the Dell girl said what I figured she'd say all along, that it's a hardware failure. She's ordered a new motherboard and power supply. Now I have to wait for them to be delivered to a local tech and then get a service call scheduled. It sounds like it will be at least a week.

In the meantime, I realized it would help to have a secondary Internet access. Thus comes my new iPhone...I'd been considering doing this next year, but losing the computer forced my hand. Oy, did it ever cost me a bundle, but I'm having fun so far.

I'm making this post as an experiment, to see if I can post to SWFans with the iPhone. I want to make sure I can continue to post my football picks until the computer is fixed. My workplace makes using the Internet for anything other than work purposes a fireable offense.

I don't expect anybody to really be interested on my plight :), but that's okay.

[Rutabaga]

Yay, the iPhone worked!

[Yog]

Those beeping sounds you heard was the BIOS giving an error warning during the POST (Power On Self Test), indicating a hardware problem. Depending on the motherboard, the number of beeps can identify where the problem is. Sounds like you have it under control though.

[Rutabaga]

That's kind of what I thought. It was a little frustrating since the Dell lady on the phone went through scads of troubleshooting first. But I understand that was her job, she had to do it.

Hopefully the hard drive is okay, although I do have an external hard drive and had kept this new computer very streamlined so far.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Yay for an iPhone :D Hope the computer issues get fixed relatively painlessly!

[Darth Turbogeek]

I sypathise for being forced to post on an iPhone - no one should be forced to put up with that :(

[Rutabaga]

I'm really enjoying the iPhone, but I definitely have found that the keyboard leaves something to be desired.

I have a very generous friend at work who has given me her notebook to keep and use as much as I need to until my computer is up and running again. I was very amazed and touched by the gesture, that's for sure.

On my computer situation, I figure best case scenario is that the Dell tech replaces the motherboard and power supply, we boot it up, and I'm off and running. Worst case scenario is that something fried the whole system, and if that's the case, then there's only one resolution that that scenario :evil.

[Mu Satach]

I sypathise for being forced to post on an iPhone - no one should be forced to put up with that :(

I like my little ap filled pocket world. :p

Of course I do have these slender dancer hands. ;)

[Morgan Evanar]

Yeah I am not so good with my large hands on touchscreens. My girlfriend and her tiny hands are fine. Touch screens are not the future, they're annoying.

[Darth Turbogeek]

I sypathise for being forced to post on an iPhone - no one should be forced to put up with that :(

I like my little ap filled pocket world. :p

Of course I do have these slender dancer hands. ;)

And yet my N97 has apps galore (The race timing app is unbelieveable!) and has that wicked kick out keyboard that makes life awesome instead of the frankly stupid touch keyboard (You just can not type as fast on the iPhone as I can on the N97's keyboard), plus touchscreen! Connects to more devices than the iPhone does too.

The inbuilt browser is ghey but I have replaced that with Opera and that's awesome. I just install RDC and get VPN's going and it will replace my laptop for travelling - and boy do I *use* mobile networking! A full sized laptop has been critical to me and network support. The fact the N97 is dangerously close to being able to replace the laptop rocks sooooooo hard..... the iPhone just cant do that, all because the interface is a turd.

[Rutabaga]

Replacing the motherboard and power supply didn't solve the problem, so the Dell tech guy called tech support. The tech support dude (in Florida, amazingly, not overseas) checked the beep error codes for the Studio XPS and said that 6 beeps means no video card is being detected. So apparently my video card has bitten the dust. They're shipping a new one out on Monday, so if that truly is the issue, then getting me back up and running should be fairly quick and painless. After the struggling the poor tech went through today :).

[Yog]

Replacing the motherboard and power supply didn't solve the problem, so the Dell tech guy called tech support. The tech support dude (in Florida, amazingly, not overseas) checked the beep error codes for the Studio XPS and said that 6 beeps means no video card is being detected. So apparently my video card has bitten the dust. They're shipping a new one out on Monday, so if that truly is the issue, then getting me back up and running should be fairly quick and painless. After the struggling the poor tech went through today :).
I suspected as much. If the PSU or motherboard is dead, you would think there would have been no sounds at all. Usually, the beeping points to either video card, RAM or CPU.

[Rutabaga]

Final update...I hope!

Dell tech came over after work and installed the new video card. He also configured the new motherboard. The computer had to go through figuring out there was new hardware on board, and we had to make some adjustments. Finally all was working well again.

Only glitch was that I had no internet connection. The Dell tech theorized that perhaps the modem or the connection was confused by the new hardware, so I got on the phone to talk to Verizon support. While I was waiting on the phone, it occurred to me that I hadn't tried the old trick of rebooting the modem, then rebooting the computer. So I did that, and that solved the problem.

I'm so glad to be back online with my speedy connection. I so dearly appreciate my friend from work loaning me her notebook, but it was so s-l-o-w that it was maddening.