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Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help.

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On 7/15/2016 21:39, Johnny B Good wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jul 2016 19:38:27 -0500, Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr. wrote:
>
>> PC went into a deep stall (it has been doing since the hard drive was
>> replaced--I can't afford another service call).
>
>   Did the service engineer not get it all working again?

I'm going to call Monday and ask for a recount.
>
>>
>> So the next time I got control back I rebooted it.
>
>   I'm not sure what you mean by "the next time I got control back". In
> what way did you "not have control"?

During the stall I get a throber where the cursor was (most of the 
time--sometimes the cursor disappears) and sometimes the screen fades 
and I get a "[somebody] is not responding" message.

Eventually it comes back alive, as if nothing was wrong--that is 
"getting control again".

>
>>
>> And Windows 10 Update took over!   On Friday!
>>
>> And ran for a long time.
>
>   Sadly for most victims, a fairly typical experience.
>
>>
>> I wandered off and came back to see it stopped on the Dell logo screen.
>
>   Interesting that it was stuck on that screen, That indicates that the
> POST procedure locked up. If it had hit a problem trying to reboot from
> the hard drive, that screen would have been replaced by either an error
> message or else a completely blank screen.
>
>>
>> So I punched the power button (My wife's machine went through a spell
>> where it would stop on a reboot until you pushed the power button).
>>
>> Screen went blank but the disc activity light was on dimly.
>>
>> After a while. I held down the power button to see if I could start a
>> recovery boot of some kind.
>>
>> No joy.
>
>   There's a 4 seconds "watchdog timer" built into the chipset designed to
> over-ride the host OS control and allow you to force a power down. The
> usual method to power down via the on/off button when the system has
> locked up is to keep it pressed for the 4 second time-out period (count
> slowly to 5) until any and all indicator lamps extinguish (in this case
> that dimly glowing HDD activity lamp as well as the power indicator).

That's what "held down the power button" means.
  If
> there's no change of lamp status when you've reached a count of 5, keep
> going for another two or three seconds to put the result in absolutely no
> doubt before pulling the plug.
>
>   HDD activity indicator lamps can glow dimly as a result of rapid but
> brief accesses. Normally, you can see the lamp flickering if you observe
> it closely. If there's no hint of flicker and you're seeing a steady dim
> glow, chances are there's some sort of hardware fault (HDD, MoBo or PSU)
> which may have nothing to do with the windows upgrade/update process
> other than perhaps the extra strain triggering an incipient fault that
> may not have occurred for a few more hours or another day or so.
>
>   I'm not entirely sure but ISTR that some models of Dell desktop PCs used
> Bestec PSUs which had a reputation (mostly witnessed by E-Machines PC
> owners about a decade ago) for overvolting the 5VSB line and slowly
> frying that bit of the MoBo responsible for monitoring the on/off button.
> This led to some rather strange symptoms before the MoBo completely
> failed. If you care to remove the case cover and take a peek at the ATX
> PSU, you may discover that it's a Bestec power supply which could be bad
> news for the MoBo (not all models of Bestec ATX psus suffered from this
> 'Kamikazi" fault).
>
>>
>> Been sitting at the Dell logo with dim disc activity light for a 1/2
>> hour or more.
>
>   If the HDD activity lamp has been glowing dimly without any hint of
> flicker for more than a minute, waiting any longer will be a complete
> waste of time and you may as well pull the plug.
>
>>
>> Where might I find help?   That will work?   That I can afford?
>
>   If you're lucky, it might simply be a (non fatal to the MoBo) PSU
> failure. My brother brought his windows 7 desktop PC to me just a few
> days ago on account the PSU overheated due to its fan finally failing to
> start up after Gawd knows how many months it had been starting up with
> very noisy symptoms of dried out fan bearings before the lubricant had
> heated up enough to stop "The Chatter" and let it get back up to normal
> speed.
>
>   This was a machine I'd originally built for him about a decade ago with
> win2k installed. It's since been through a couple of hardware and OS
> upgrades (MoBo/CPU/RAM/HDD/SSD upgrades and winXP then win7) using the
> same case and PSU. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that *that* ATX PSU
> lasted as long as it did.
>
>   Mind you, it may have lasted even longer if My Bro and SiL hadn't
> completely ignored the symptoms of impending fan failure and had asked me
> to fix the problem in a more timely fashion (I'd probably have swapped
> the PSU out rather than faff about oiling the fan bearings though).
>
>   Despite the PSU going "Phut!" and generating smelly 'magic smoke',
> surprisingly, it hadn't blown the internal safety fuse and was still
> providing power to the 5VSB rail (keyboard/mouse sockets configured to be
> powered from the 5VSB rail provided this indication).
>
>   Experience told me not to bother testing any further than disconnecting
> power to the drives to eliminate faults that could have presented an
> overload condition to the PSU so I substituted the highly suspect PSU
> with another known to be working one (SoP in such cases) which allowed
> the PC to spring back into life.
>
>   Although Dell tends to use slightly bastardised dimensionally formatted
> variations on the 'Industry Standard' ATX PSU, it's usually possible to
> make a standard ATX psu fit with relatively minor mods to the case
> (usually just a bit of metal bending or tinsnips work) so you can avoid
> the over-priced "Dell Specials" and keep the repair costs down to a mere
> 20 to 30 quid if you DIY it or else take it to a repair shop and pay for
> the half hour's worth of labour it usually takes (even when bending/
> cutting metal to fit a standard ATX psu) plus the cost of the replacement
> PSU.
>
>   Of course, your problem might down to any hardware failure (the symptoms
> strongly suggest hardware failure which could include yet another HDD
> failure as well as faults elsewhere). You need to do some more testing to
> determine which, if any, components have failed. In your case, it sounds
> like you need the services of an experienced technician to sort this one
> out for you.
>
>   Alternatively (seeing as you're reluctant to shell out on another
> service call), if you have internet access from another machine (which
> appears to be the case), you could try googling for PC fault finding
> tutorials and have a go at locating the fault yourself. The symptoms, as
> described, don't appear to be the more usual software/driver issues that
> can arise with such windows updates/upgrades.
>
> HTH & HAND.

Thanks--I have permission to pay for an hour--need to think about trying 
to take it in since I can get more than an hour for that price and it is 
a good gamble if they decide the new drive croaked.

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Thread

Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. "Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr." <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-07-15 19:38 -0500
  Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2016-07-16 02:39 +0000
    Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. "Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr." <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-07-16 01:28 -0500
      Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2016-07-16 17:08 +0000
        Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. "Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr." <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-07-17 13:26 -0500
          Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. Bob Eager <news0006@eager.cx> - 2016-07-17 20:46 +0000
            Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. "Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr." <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-07-17 18:38 -0500
    Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-07-22 14:34 -0500
  Re: Windows 10 Update Destroyed My Desk-Top PC. Need Help. British Rocket Group <no_email@invalid.invalid> - 2016-08-06 20:50 +0000

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