Hi everyone 
I've encountered a strange issue with my machine and I was hoping someone might be able to help.
About a week ago my computer started randomly crashing. When the crash occurs the screen simply goes black - sometimes briefly showing a white screen. The computer seems entirely un-responsive - pressing caps lock doesn't do anything - but the fans are still on and I believe any audio that was playing will continue to play. I'm not 100% sure about audio as I've only had music playing once when the crash occurred.
If I turn the computer off and attempt to turn it back on it won't boot. It doesn't get as far as the BIOS or even then Dell start up screen. The fans are the only indication that the machine is on - I don't think I can hear the HD spinning.
The first time this occurred, the machine mysteriously started working again a couple of hours later. From this I concluded that it must have overheated, however the next time I left it overnight and it still wouldn't turn on. Thinking it might have been dust, or a loose connection I opened the machine, cleaned it and ensured everything was connected properly - still no luck.
I then thought it might have been dodgy RAM, so I pulled all of the memory out bar a single stick. This worked! The machine turned on so I figured that one of the sticks must be broken and tried each on its own in turn to find out which - but all of them worked. I then tried running the machine with all bar 1 stick to see if the issue would occur again. Each time it did, i rotated the omitted stick. I've since had the issue occur with each of the sticks removed.
It seems unlikely that two RAM sticks will have broken at the same time. I've since tried just pulling a single RAM stick and immediately replacing it and discovered this also fixes the problem.
My hardware knowledge is lacking, is there something that would be temporarily fixed simply by removing and replacing RAM?
Specs are off the top of my head (I'm at work):
OS: Windows 8.1
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 2.8GHz
RAM: 6Gb DDR3 1333MHz
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5670
Cheers!
- Ian
I've encountered a strange issue with my machine and I was hoping someone might be able to help.
About a week ago my computer started randomly crashing. When the crash occurs the screen simply goes black - sometimes briefly showing a white screen. The computer seems entirely un-responsive - pressing caps lock doesn't do anything - but the fans are still on and I believe any audio that was playing will continue to play. I'm not 100% sure about audio as I've only had music playing once when the crash occurred.
If I turn the computer off and attempt to turn it back on it won't boot. It doesn't get as far as the BIOS or even then Dell start up screen. The fans are the only indication that the machine is on - I don't think I can hear the HD spinning.
The first time this occurred, the machine mysteriously started working again a couple of hours later. From this I concluded that it must have overheated, however the next time I left it overnight and it still wouldn't turn on. Thinking it might have been dust, or a loose connection I opened the machine, cleaned it and ensured everything was connected properly - still no luck.
I then thought it might have been dodgy RAM, so I pulled all of the memory out bar a single stick. This worked! The machine turned on so I figured that one of the sticks must be broken and tried each on its own in turn to find out which - but all of them worked. I then tried running the machine with all bar 1 stick to see if the issue would occur again. Each time it did, i rotated the omitted stick. I've since had the issue occur with each of the sticks removed.
It seems unlikely that two RAM sticks will have broken at the same time. I've since tried just pulling a single RAM stick and immediately replacing it and discovered this also fixes the problem.
My hardware knowledge is lacking, is there something that would be temporarily fixed simply by removing and replacing RAM?
Specs are off the top of my head (I'm at work):
OS: Windows 8.1
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 2.8GHz
RAM: 6Gb DDR3 1333MHz
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5670
Cheers!
- Ian
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram