Computer disaster? WHAT HAVe I DONE???????

[aquart]

We bought my mom a new used pc Pentium III 750 384 Mb ram WIN XP HOME but no wireless adapter so we put in the Netgear from the old, deadish computer. Refused to boot. Refused to so much as beep. Pulled out the card. Happy pc again. Uninstalled the Netgear software.

Bought a Linksys card with the same specs as the Netgear. Booted fine. Refused to recognize the card. Pulled the card out and installed it in another slot. DID SOMETHING STUPID.

I'd forgotten to screw on the antenna thingy. So I tried to do it while the pc was booting. Got SPARKS.

PC booted as far as the selection of users, then started spontaneously rebooting over and over and over and over. Wouldn't shut down. Until I went in the back and pushed the on/off switch that's used for transporting.

Pulled out the card. Rebooted. PC still spontaneously rebooting over and over and over and over but only going to the dos black and white Windows did not shut down normally and then rebooting.

WHAT HAVE I DONE? HOW DO I FIX IT? AM I DOOMED TO BE AN IDIOT FOREVER??????

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

1. Nah, not forever. One day you might wise up and go Mac.

:hide:

[LSK]

3. want my iPod?

Its dead. Wonderful Apple products.

:hide:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

4. Mine is old and it still works great.

Of course, if you got Apple Care on it, they would have given you a brand new iPod, if they couldn't fix it. Also, have you tried resetting the iPod? That seems to revive "dead" iPods sometimes.

[LSK]

16. how do you reset them?

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

17. Here's the Apple iPod support page...

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/

Resetting it won't erase your music either. Finally, you may want to try restoring it, which will erase the music, but hopefully will result in a working iPod.

[LSK]

21. thanks, reseting it didnt work

:(

[IsIt1984Yet]

2. It's a good sign that you get something on the screen

Try to boot from the Windows CD, or get into SAFE MODE from the DOS menu.

I fried a hard drive being stupid like that once.

[aquart]

5. Oh, dear god, we tossed the other pc because the HD died.

And we didn't want to deal with it.

Oh, crap, crap, crap. Is that what I did????

[IsIt1984Yet]

12. Well, it's probably not the HD

My educated guess is that it's the power supply.

[sendero]

6. Say whaaa?

You tried to screw on the antenna and got sparks? That's crazy. Did you not have the card screwed down and jostle it out of the slot or what?

Screwing the anntena on while "hot" should not be a problem, if the card was mechanically secured.

[aquart]

7. It was screwed in. I think it was seated correctly.

[sendero]

8. I can't...

... figure out why that would cause an arcing. But it did, so - probably the news is not good.

If you are in a reboot cycle, there is a good chance that hardware was damaged - perhaps something on the motherboard.

You can go into safe mode, see where it's dying and maybe work backward - my experience with this sort of problem suggests happy endings to be unlikely.

Sorry.

[Gatchaman]

9. As much as I loathe Dell

especially their ultra low end consumer products, I still think that one of their $249 celery machines would be a better deal than ANY used computer.

[aquart]

13. $80 for a PIII 750 with dvd rom and 384 MB ram plus

the legal disk for Windows XP Home and a new Logitech keyboard and mouse?

[IsIt1984Yet]

14. Yes, because you'd have a warranty instead of a big paperweight

Seriously, take out the power supply and go to your local PC shop. They are like $25 tops. It's worth a shot.

[Benfea]

18. Life's too short for cheap power supplies.

A bad or underpowered power supply can potentially break other parts of your computer. No $25 PSU can possibly be worthwhile.

[aquart]

19. And how would it be the power supply when it power on and beeps?

[Benfea]

24. Dunno. I'm not the one who suggested it.

I'm just saying that a $25 PSU is a bad idea.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

25. Yeah, you got screwed.

There's no better way to say that. I wouldn't pay more than $20 for that computer.

[Benfea]

10. Sounds like you got a bum computer to me.

Is there any kind of guarantee.

[aquart]

11. Craigslist. It worked PERFECTLY.

I am beside myself. I've had computer disasters but never anything like this.

[Fredda Weinberg]

15. Sparks means high voltage. Damage is inevitable

See if you can boot off a floppy, if yes, you still have a mother board. If not, the beast is fried. Good luck.

[Xipe Totec]

20. Pentium III running XP? Yikes!

Not a good idea. Way underpowered for that pig of an OS. You'll be lucky if that rig runs Win2K adequately.

For WinXP you need Pentium 4, and a minimum of 512MB.

Don't know if the sparky thingie did any permanent damage, but the problem with the adapters sounds like you have a resource conflict, which is typical for older PCs.

[aquart]

22. I've been very weepy lately.

Are you trying to destroy me?

My uncle's old warhorse has been running xp for years. YEARS. It's fine. Fine.

Meanwhile, I created a catastrophe while trying to save money.

[Xipe Totec]

23. Let's look at it from the point of view of status

What do we have that works?

- Gene Krantz (Apollo 13 mission controller)


You said the system beeps and powers up. What else works?

Does it complete POST?

Can you reach the BIOS screen?

Can you boot to DOS from a floppy?

If you can boot to floppy then the problem is not the hardware, it is the OS.

You said you're installing a wireless network card. Is the network secure? is it firewalled?

If the XP version on the system was out of date wrt to security patches, it might have gotten hit by a virus over the wi-fi. That would mean the network card actually worked.