Home Built PC

Toshiba Satellite A45-S120
This laptops screen is blank and there's a fan on the bottom that's not working. I'm a novice in PC hardware repair. It's going to cost $200-$300 to repair. Anyone have any suggestions as to how I should troubleshoot this problem on my own? :crybaby: ... 20 Sep 2006 16:21

Monitor not being properly recognized by 25 ft. vga cable
Hi all, VERY weird problem I am having here. I bought a 25 ft. vga cable to run from my shuttle to my 19" widescreen flat panel. The native resolution for that puppy is 1440 x 900. It runs fine on the default VGA cable that came with the monitor, but when I hook up the longer cable it won't even let me select 1... 21 Sep 2006 13:49

Sound problems updated
I have a Gigabyte motherboard (GA-7VTXH) that has the sound chip (creative CT5880) on the mb. For some reason the sound device keeps stopping to work. I reload the drivers (current from Gigabyte site) and everything works. Then the next day I have no sound (even if I never turn the machine off). The device mana... 18 Sep 2006 12:11

ASUS TSUI-M motherboard (SiS630ET 3C Integration Single Chip) video resolution
Hi all: I am thinking of buying a Niko-1906W 19" Widescreen 5ms TFT LCD Monitor, which I think the native resolution is 1440 x 900. I wonder if my old PC (with ASUS TUSI-M motherboard, with SiS630ET chip and Celeron 1.3G CPU and integrated video) could run this resolution of not. As there is NO AGP slot or PCI-e... 21 Sep 2006 09:29

PCI Express x1 Video Card - Should I Bother
I just bought a Dell E310, and to my dismay, my only shot at adding a dedicated video card is via a plain-jain PCI slot, or a single PCIE x1 slot. No PCIE x16 slot exists on this motherboard! Question is, I would like to install a military style first person shooter which is graphics intensive. Would this be ... 21 Sep 2006 17:05

Question Re. reducing computer noise!
Hi there, I have a VIA VT8235 motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP-M 1700+. The fan is labelled as Pro 3000A+ and is really noisy. The PSU is an EZ Cool ATX-400 JSP and labelled as 'super silent'. The guy I bought the computer from told me that the fan fixing is not a standard fixing, although I can't get hold of him ... 13 Sep 2006 09:58

Sound problems
I have a Gigabyte motherboard (GA-7VTXH) that has built in sound. For some reason the sound drivers keep disappearing. I reload the drivers (current from Gigabyte site) and everything works. Then the next day I have no sound and have to reload the drivers. Ant idea what is going on? I am running Windows XP and the ... 13 Sep 2006 17:39

Weirdy to watch
I have 8 Antec SmartPower 350 power supplies that are blown. No biggie, they are still in warranty, but I opened one of them to see if I could tell what the problem is. Sure enough C16 and C17 are swollen and leaking goop. Both are 1000@ 10V, and both are associated with the standby power .. that is when the PC i... 12 Sep 2006 05:17

Thermal paste
Hello, I have a computer over which is a Pentium 4, 3 GHz, single core, packaged in a particularly slim case. The system used to be constantly overheating (with CPU essentially running at 79°C all the time), so I put in two fans to draw the air out. The CPU is now running at 60°C idle and thus I am still not h... 20 Sep 2006 10:23

Best video card for an old hand-me-down...
About a year ago I received a gift computer when a friend got a better one. I've been upgrading it slowly... and now I've run into a bit of a problem. It's nigh-impossible to find a good video card to put into it. I've tried a couple that "should have worked" but didn't. Okay, first of all... the motherboard i... 2 Sep 2006 13:08