Required: Help/Advice/Petting and Soothing

[darkhavens]

So, for the last few days my computer has been making funky noises, and I, coward that I am, have been hoping they'll go away... like they did last time. And today they went away! Yay! Only... not.

Through the medium of the laying on of hands (literally), I have discovered that one of the fans has died - there are/were two. So, for the first time in my life, I have opened up my computer and peeked inside - and it is skeery. And omg!everso!dusty!

I've left the side off the computer to allow air to circle freely while I am online over the weekend, and on Monday I will take my tale of woe to the local computer nerd shop down the road. (I've also turned off the central heating (which may have been a factor) and opened one of the windows wide to make sure the room is nice and cool. (Cold! Dammit where did I put my fluffy slippers?!)

So... Advice? Petting? (I freak at installing software or simple plug-and-play hardware, so actually opening the case and seeing my computer guts? MAAAAAJOR freaking going on here right now.) Did I do the right thing opening it up/leaving it open? Should I shut it off immediately and go bang my head against the wall until it's Monday?

And dear gods, the live and very very loud thrash metal concert going on in the town hall directly opposite my now wide open window is not exactly providing me with a stress-freee atmosphere of calm. It is, however, vibrating my floorboards. o.O

*wibbles*

ETA: After the bazzionth reboot, the fan seems to have been resurrected, a bit. it's sluggish, but the metal box it's sitting in, inside the main body of the computer innards, is not hot to the touch now.

Of course, I'll be touching regularly and definitely turning it off to cool down if/when it does get hot again, but *clings* I'm here for now. And I will definitely be going to visit the neighbourhood geeks on Monday.

Comments

[tabaqui]

*hugs*
If your fan has died, then you did fine. Your 'puter needs to be cool to function. You could try vacuuming out some of the dust and/or blowing it out - by an open window - with some canned air. Otherwise, you should be fine.

Cat has a little desk-top fan clipped to the open side of his 'puter 'cause one of his fans failed and we just haven't gotten around to fixing/replacing it yet. It ran all summer. So no worries!

*hugs more*

Vibrating floor, huh?
*has naughty thoughts*

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

*smooches you*

Thank you for being here in my time of need. *g*

The fllor is probably going to vibrate for the next three hours, by which time I will be drawing beads on the windows of the town hall opposite and wishing I had an actual gun and not just a laser pointer.

I like good heavy rock music. This? Is not good heavy rock music. It's guitar abuse, accompanied by drumming and yelling. *sigh* I'm getting old.

[tabaqui]

Dude. If i were handed tickets to a concert right now. An *Alice Cooper* concert, i would probably not go.
*is old right there with you*

[lyonza.livejournal.com]

One thing... don't vacuum, get compressed air and clean out the machine... better yet, get the nerds to do it for you.

my laptop was getting all hot and noisy, a friend blew it out with a compressor and viola! it works again

most folks forget to get their compys get hectic dusty inside, and the dust promotes heat build-up and stuff

get the fan replaced too

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't put my vacuum near it, it's too powerful, not to mention too unwieldy. *g*

I'm going to be shopping for compressed air first thing on monday. Now that the first step of opening the magic box has been accomplished, (and my baby still lives! *g*) I can calm down a little and get things sorted.

Thanks for commenting! :D

[lyonza.livejournal.com]

Any time - I've had my fair share of comp problems and having lived with techies for the last seven years I've learned a few things.

Mail/yell/squeak if you need some advice in future.

[wordsjunkie.livejournal.com]

Don't poke around inside unless you de static yourself first.

If you have a fan, you know like a box fan or a window fan that might help too.

You don't want it to get too hot or it'll melt down and you'll lose all your data. So if you have an external data storage I'd back up the important stuff. Ifn you can afford to get an external hard drive like the My Book it's real easy and you can have stuff on a totally different hard drive, that you can disconnect and use on any computer. It's real easy, you just plug it into your USB port. There's no software or anything to mess with.When you want to transfer or copy stuff over to it you just click on your computer icon and choose the My Book drive.

I have a 250 gig one that has all my documents,music, video, pics, icons and stuff backed up on it.

As soon as I can get a big batch of DVDs that stuff will be backed up on DVDs too. Paranoid? Yeah, but I've lived through 4 or 5 reformats and reloads, and one total CPU meltdown, and I lost soooo much stuff. So now I make sure all the stuff that is important to me, bookmarks,fic files and all that are backed up somewhere besides my computer.

[txrabbit.livejournal.com]

Hey sweetie, Bradley says that the biggest mistake computer owners make is allowing them to get dirty on the inside. Most likely, you can get the fan repaired, then you will need to keep it clean!! Get a little vacuum and just suck it clean every couple of months and you can avoid things like this happening again in the future. So sorry! *smootch*