purple_minion
New Member
- Reaction score
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- Location
- Minnesota, USA
(It is a long post, sorry guys.)
Talk about lucky. I offered to clean the POS computers at work since they were getting gunked up with grease and dust, clogging the heatsinks and ventilation holes. Never worked on a POS before, so the first one I went slow to not break anything (since apparently they were $1200 new, which I find rediculus). Put back together, turn on and it sounds like a cable is hitting the fan blade, take apart twice more and it dawns on me that the fan is on it's last leg, as the bearing is going out on the HS fan.
Next POS on another day 30 minutes apart, cleaned, and back together... another fan making noise but at least I'm not hunting for the issue. Third POS today, should be easy. Take apart, clean, put back together, and it starts trying to boot over the LAN. I saw this one day as I was done cleaning the place and didn't think anything of it... only this time it was in an endless reboot while looking for a server to boot from. Hook up my keyboard and just as I guessed, the HD isn't being detected. Swapping an old one I brought along shows the mine does show up, however theirs does not. I hooked the POS drive via usb AIO adapter to my netbook, and somehow it shows up. I grab an image with partimage and driveimage XML, as I may only have one shot of it working.
While that is going I rig up a HS fan as that one has COMPLETELY seized up, unfortunately my smallest fan is too big, and the screws aren't long enough to even screw down one corner. Well I taped it on, best I could do. Found out that the MB has no over temp sensors as that HS was scorching hot since the fan was toast. I did restore the image to one of my old drives and plugged her in and it came right up.
The date on the drive was from 2001 and these things have been going 24x7, so it doesn't surprise me that these things are dying. I tell you I almost had a heart attack when it didn't boot. The thing that scared me was how do you convince someone that knows absolutely nothing about computers that you didn't do it. Granted I did turn it off to clean it out, and it could have lasted who knows how much longer since it was already running. I have had a few fans and HD that were running fine until you power off, and they just will not start up again. I've looked up prices on newegg and the smallest drive plus fan is $40 plus shipping.
Originally I took the first one apart in the morning because it sounded very weird, which I now know was the fan bearing. However I told the owner how dirty it was and as a preventive measure should spend a little time cleaning it out so as to prolong the life of the components such as the cpu, drive, caps, etc. I suppose things this old are just ready to go at the drop of a hat. I'm sure I did something wrong procedurally, but it seems to have all turned out alright so far.
Also forgot to mention hooking the drive up at home to a computer and it refuses to show in the bios. Apparently I was REALLY lucky or my usb adapter is REALLY good.
Talk about lucky. I offered to clean the POS computers at work since they were getting gunked up with grease and dust, clogging the heatsinks and ventilation holes. Never worked on a POS before, so the first one I went slow to not break anything (since apparently they were $1200 new, which I find rediculus). Put back together, turn on and it sounds like a cable is hitting the fan blade, take apart twice more and it dawns on me that the fan is on it's last leg, as the bearing is going out on the HS fan.
Next POS on another day 30 minutes apart, cleaned, and back together... another fan making noise but at least I'm not hunting for the issue. Third POS today, should be easy. Take apart, clean, put back together, and it starts trying to boot over the LAN. I saw this one day as I was done cleaning the place and didn't think anything of it... only this time it was in an endless reboot while looking for a server to boot from. Hook up my keyboard and just as I guessed, the HD isn't being detected. Swapping an old one I brought along shows the mine does show up, however theirs does not. I hooked the POS drive via usb AIO adapter to my netbook, and somehow it shows up. I grab an image with partimage and driveimage XML, as I may only have one shot of it working.
While that is going I rig up a HS fan as that one has COMPLETELY seized up, unfortunately my smallest fan is too big, and the screws aren't long enough to even screw down one corner. Well I taped it on, best I could do. Found out that the MB has no over temp sensors as that HS was scorching hot since the fan was toast. I did restore the image to one of my old drives and plugged her in and it came right up.
The date on the drive was from 2001 and these things have been going 24x7, so it doesn't surprise me that these things are dying. I tell you I almost had a heart attack when it didn't boot. The thing that scared me was how do you convince someone that knows absolutely nothing about computers that you didn't do it. Granted I did turn it off to clean it out, and it could have lasted who knows how much longer since it was already running. I have had a few fans and HD that were running fine until you power off, and they just will not start up again. I've looked up prices on newegg and the smallest drive plus fan is $40 plus shipping.
Originally I took the first one apart in the morning because it sounded very weird, which I now know was the fan bearing. However I told the owner how dirty it was and as a preventive measure should spend a little time cleaning it out so as to prolong the life of the components such as the cpu, drive, caps, etc. I suppose things this old are just ready to go at the drop of a hat. I'm sure I did something wrong procedurally, but it seems to have all turned out alright so far.
Also forgot to mention hooking the drive up at home to a computer and it refuses to show in the bios. Apparently I was REALLY lucky or my usb adapter is REALLY good.
