Tutorial - How To Fix Many Hardware Problems

With loads of complex devices all working together, bound by complicated intructions inside a PC, you're bound to have some trouble with some of the components sometime in your PC's life. Because of the complex nature of the computer, it can be frustrating to try and locate the troublesome component that's giving you grief. I'm here to help you with as many hardware problems as I possibly can. Whether your PC won't boot up, your graphics aren't working properly, you're hearing beeps during bootup or even if you're having networking issues, it's all here. Contents 1. BIOS and the booting up 2. Memory and HDD (Hard Disc Drive) problems 3. Video and sound cards 4. Make your PC environmentally friendly 5. Networking and USB BIOS and the booting up If your PC won't boot up properly and fails to show a display, then there are several ways to diagnose the problem. First of all you may be recieving beeping noises from your computer. These are perfectly normal and are there to help you decypher what's wrong with your PC. Here's a complete list of beep codes and there meanings: Award BIOS 1 long beep - A memory problem, remove and reseat the RAM 1 long, 2 short or 1 long, 3 short - Video card problem. Replace the graphics card or its memory Continuous - Memory and/or video card problems. Reseat video card and RAM Phoenix BIOS 1,1,3 - CMOS unreadable. Replace the motherboard 1,1,4 - BIOS failure. Replace the BIOS (explained later on) 1,2,1 - The timer chip has failed. Replace the motherboard 1,2,2 or 1,2,3 or 1,3,1 or 1,3,3 or 1,3,4 or 1,4,1 or 4,2,1 or 4,3,1 or 4,3,2 or 4,3,2 - Motherboard error, replace it 1,3,3 - Memory problems. Remove and reseat the RAM 1,4,2 - Faulty memory. Test and reaplce your RAM (testing exmplained alter on) 2,any,any - Any beeps after 2 indicates bad memory. Run a memory test and replace the RAM (testing exmplained alter on) 3,1,any - Faulty motherboard chip. Replace it 3,2,4 - Keyboard controller error. Replace keyboard controller chip or the motherboard 3,3,4 - No video card. Try removing and reseating it, or adding one 4,2,2 or 4,2,3 - Replace the keyboard. If this persists replace the motherboard 4,2,4 - Remove and replace all PCI cards one by one to find the faulty one. Replace it 4,3,4 - Clock error. Reset motherboard clock using its setup program. Replace CMOS battery if necessary. If this fails replace PSU (Power Supply Unit) 4,4,1 or 4,4,2 - Use motherboard manual to disable the serial ports and add an I/O card to replace them 4,4,3 - Maths coporcessor malfunctioning. Use a low-level diagnostic program to confirm this, then disable it AMI BIOS None - Faulty speaker, broken motherboard or PSU problem

1 short beep - RAM refresh, interrupt timer or interrupt controller failure. Replace motherboard 2 short beeps or 3 short beeps - Indicates memory problems. Check the seating of RAM or replace it 4 short beeps - System timer failure. Repalce motherboard 5 short beeps - CPU failure 6 short beeps - Keyboard controller chip error. Replace keyboard. If this persists chip may need to be reseated/replaced 7 short beeps - CPU exception error. Replace CPU and/or motherboard 8 short beeps - Video card failure. Reseat the graphics card 9 short beeps - ROM checksum error. BIOS ROM is bad. Replace it 10 short beeps - CMOS problem. Replace motherboard 11 short beeps - L2 cache memory failure. Replace L2 cache memory. 1 long, 3 short - Memory test failure in RAM over the first 64k 1 long, 8 short - Display test error. Missing or broken video card If you're uncertain of which BIOS you have, download this program, open it, click the Run button and where it says BIOS manufacturer, that's your BIOS. If beeps don't resolve your problem, you'll need to test each component individually. Here's how to: 1. Dismantle your PC completely, taking anti-static precautions. Take the motherboard out of the case and place it on a non-conductive surface. Remove everything excpt the processor, heatsink and memory. 2. Connect the power supply to the motherboard and speaker. Press the on switch. Do the heatsink fans turn? Can your hear any BIOS beeps? If not, remove the RAM and try again. 3. If the board seems to be recieving power, try connectiong the graphics card. DO this carefully, ensuring that you don't stress the PCI/AGP/PCI-e slot. Connect your monitor and power up the PC. Do you get a picture? If not, replace the graphics card and try again. If this fails the problem may be your PCI/AGP/PCI-e slot. 4. Now you can recieve power and a picture, so place the motherboard back in the case, lining it up correctly with the spacers to avoid shorting out. Reconnect the power, switch, speaker and graphics card and start the computer again to check taht it still works. 5. Connect your hard drives and start the computer. Are they detected? Does it begin to boot correctly? If not, check your BIOS settings, jumper configurations and trysubstituting the drives themselves. 6. Now you have a system that can boot, connect your remaining PCI cards and try starting again. If all goes well, you can reassemble the computer, connect your periphals and get it up and running once more. Memory and HDD (Hard Disc Drive) problems RAM Your PC stores data in its memory temporarily, but as RAM loses its contents as soon as the power is cut, you also need a more permanent method of storage. Most commonly this is the hard drive, but CD and DVD rewriters can perform this function too, as can removable flash drives and older taps and floppy disks. Memory problems can show themselves through random system freezes, in blue screens or STOP errors. If you suspect faulty memory you'll need to run a memory testing utility such as MemTest. Replace any memory that is found to be faulty. Before you throw out apparently "dud", check to see if reseating and/or changing RAM slots improves the situation. Your RAM slot may be faulty.

Settings within the BIOS can also affect performance. Enter the BIOS by pressing the delete or F8 key buring bootup, select Advanced Chipset Features, where you can adjust your RAM settings. Select memory timings and press enter to input your own timings. CAS stands for Column Access Strobe and it manages how quickly memory units can return a response to a data request. Bank Cycle Timer or tRAS is the number of clock cycles needed to create the difference in charge between the bit and lines of reference to restore the data in the cells of memory. tRCD or RAS to CAS delay is again measures in clock cycles and can limit memory performance. Aim for low CAS latency and low RAS-to-CAS delay. Low Bank Cycle time is despirable. RAS Precharge has less affect on performance. Hard drives Your hard drive is probably the most active moving part in your PC. It's reasonable to expect hard drive failure after using the PC for several years, so regular (once a week) backups are greatly recommended. Hard drive manufacturers have developed SMART or Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology that gives your PC the ability to predict imminent hard drive failure, giving you the time to backup and replace the drive before you lose any data. You can normally enable SMART (if present) through the BIOS. By using a program the utilises SMART, you can find out the health of your hard drive. Drive Health is an excellent utility that provides you with an instant diagnosis of your drive. If you're replacing a drive, decide whether it's a master or slave and then set the jumpers to the positions indicated by the diagram printed on the drive itself. Once you've plugged everything in enter the BIOS by pressinf the delete key or F8 key on your keyboard during bootup. Select the IDE bus information, usually found under standard CMOS settings. Set each device to Auto. Choose Auto detect if available. Video and sound cards Video cards If you have a powerful graphics card it may need alot of power. Consider upgrading your PSU (Power Supply Unit) if you use a high end video card. I recommend more than 400W of power. The most up-to-date drivers for your graphics card will give you the best performance. Check nVidia's site or ATI's site for driver updates. If there's a newer driver than the one you're currently using be sure to download and install it. If you have a corrupt drivers consider booting into safe mode by hitting F8 repeatedly during startup, so that you can use driver roll-back if you're using Windows XP. To do this right-click on My Computer, click properties, then hardware, and then click on device managar. Click the display adapters menu, right-click your graphics card and then click on properties. From here you can select the driver tab and then click on roll-back driver. If you have a noisy fan on your graphics card then clean it out thoroughly along with the heatsink and replace it. If it's still extremely noisy then I recommend you purchase a new fan. Sound Cards If you're getting no sound, first check that all of the connections on the back of your motherboard and in firmly and connected to the write slot. If this doesn't fix the problem click on the volume control panel in the system tray (near there the clock is displayed in the lower-right side of the desktop). Ensure that the

mute box isn't checked for any of the channels except for line in (stop that annoying noise when you connect to the internet). Your sound card may not be selected as the default card within windows which will also cause the loss of sound. Open the control panel, choose multimedia or sounds and audio devices. Select the aduio tab and check that the default devices are those install on your PC. Select sounds and test a windows event sound to see if you can hear it. You can also check the sound capabilities of your version of DirectX by typing dxdiag into the run prompt, clicking the sound and music tabs and clicking on the test buttons. Your sound card may also sufer from driver issues or the conflict between on board sound. Read through your motherboard manual to find out how to disable the on board sound. This can usually be achieved within the BIOS or by modifying jumper settings on the motherboard itself. Try updating the driver by visitng the manufacturer's website if you're expierenced erratic sounds. Make your PC environmentally friendly The PC health section of the BIOS allows you to see key information including CPU temperature, system temperature and fan speeds. You can set levels at which the BIOS can take action to stop your components over heating a melting/burning. Many power management features affect your system's performance, but they save energy and if people used them they would have a significant effect on the environment. Most involve shutting down parts of your system after a certain amount of idle time. To access your power options open up the control panel and then select power options. There are several power-saving states that a PC can enter. Dozing slows the processor down to around half normal speed, standby shuts down the hard drives and graphics output, suspend closes all devices down except the CPU, inactive shuts down the processor and powers down the L2 cache and the aptly named HDD power down shuts down the hard drive. Networking and USB Networking Networking can be a tricky business if you're not too sure of what you're doing, so this is where I come in to help you out. If you're having networking problems consult your manuals to ensure that all connections are in the correct places and that none of the wires are damaged. If you're using a wireless network make sure that there's as little interferance as possible from things such as telephones, radios, televisions etc. Check to see if your wireless adaptor drivers are correctly installed. In Windows XP use the wireless network setup wizard to sort out encryption problems. This helps you by providing a print out of the network settings and the ability to transer these using a USB drive. Launch it by choosing Start -> All PRograms -> Accessories -> Communications -> Wireless Network Setup Wizard or by selecting it within the control panel. Wireless networks are significantly less secure than wired networks as people within your neighbourhood may also access your connection. To prevent this download a leading firewall such as Sygate.

USB If you're having problems with a certain USB device, the problem probably lies within the connection and not the device itself. Check the device managar to see if the USB controller is properly installed. If there's no mention of USB in device manager, check your BIOS to see if it's enabled. Re-installing your USB controller can often clear glitches with USB devices. To do this follow these steps: 1. Open up the control panel and select performance and maintanence. Now select system and open the system properties dialog and move to the hardware tab. This is where USB problems can be sorted out. 2. Click device managr and scroll down to Universal Serial Bus Controllers. Expand this entry so that you can see each USB controller installed on your system. We need to uninstall these before we can reinstall them. 3. Right-click each of the USB controllers and choose uninstall. Once complete, reboot your PC and reinstall the USB controllersas your system detects them. Now plug in a USB device to see if the problem has been cleared.