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Computer Shutdown Problems

Thursday, May 8th, 2008 Will 2 comments

I’m seriously annoyed with my desktop computer at home. The computer, which is only about a year old, recently started shutting down on its own. I noticed after the big April Windows Update, my icons weren’t showing up in taskbar. Maybe I should’ve done a system restore then, but I didn’t. The shutdown problems started soon after that, so I figured the update might have been causing my computer to act crazy. Now I’m not so sure about that.

Using software that came with the motherboard, I checked the CPU temperature. Mostly it runs around 180° F, but if I open up a browser or start playing music, I’ll see the temperature jump to a cool 220° F. Ouch! So, I think that may be why my computer is shutting down. All the fans inside are still working, so I don’t know what could have changed.

I have also noticed that some of the decorative lights on the computer case are no longer working. Maybe this weekend I’ll take the time to look at it more closely. I’m not really a hardware person, but maybe I can figure something out.

I can’t do anything intensive on it without it shutting down, so for now it’s mostly just a really large mp3 player.

Any suggestions?

Update, 5/10
I replaced the CPU fan and heatsink and I also added a second case fan. Now the system temperature is around 75°F and the CPU temperature is around 100°F. It’s a little louder than before, but at least it’s cool. A cool computer is a happy computer.

Tags: computers, shutdown

The Taking

Sunday, May 4th, 2008 Will No comments

When I picked The Taking by Dean Koontz as my next book, I had no idea there would be similarties to my last book, Childhood’s End. There’s an alien invasion, but this time they appear to be hostile. The adult characters in this book have read a lot of science fiction books and watched a lot of science fiction movies, and that kind of annoyed me at times. The way that they talked didn’t seem like the way that real people talk, but maybe I just don’t know how real people talk. SPOILER: In the end the aliens leave and the survivors are left to rebuild society. You end up wondering if it was truly aliens that caused the catastrophe in the first place.

I keep hearing good things about Koontz, so I’m going to assume that I just picked the wrong book by him to try first. I’m not sure how I came to across this book in the first place. Next time I want to read one of his books, I’ll ask for recommendations from my friend John the Dean Koontz expert.