Any PC Buffs out there ?

[TFSI]

I have an old Acer Aspire Desktop PC based in the kitchen that i mostly just use for emails and printing. Our little Dell laptop does all the heavy internet stuff.

This Acer has got to be 8 years old and has served our family very very well over the years.

Recently when its been cold overnight i switch it on and on/off button lights up green and then nothing !!!! Dependant on how cold its been it can then suddenly boot up after 30 minutes or sometimes as long as 4-5 hours before it boots. Apart from this it's fine and works brilliantly.

Do they have an internal damp/temp sensor somewhere that will stop it booting if faulty. For 7 years its been fine in its location but this last 12 months its gradually got worse so that when cold weather is forcast we leave it on and just switch off the monitor.

Obviously at 8 years old i'm not prepared to spend big money on it !! Is it a simple or difficult repair i am looking at ??


Thanks in advance.

 

[Viking]

8 years old is obsolete in computer terms. It's time you backed up any important stuff and bought another.

 

[jojo]

I have a Dell desktop that's 10 years old+ that I use for email and accounts. Got to admit it's past it's best, but still functional. I will replace it when it finally gives up the ghost though....

 

[johnnythepie]

why dont you do a disk check, defrag the drive, run ccleaner and spybot, disk cleanup (start>all programs>accessories>system tools).disk cleanup blow the vents out and see if it improves......it wont cost you anything before you check it.Best advice already given is to back everything up.If youve made/got restore discs, then a cheap fix is to replace the hard drive as theyre dirt cheapnow as is more ram.

 

[jcs356]

Probably a split bit of solder somewhere that gets worse when it's colder, as it warms up the contact is made and it springs into life. Bit needle in a haystack to find it unless it's the power on switch itself.

Echo other comments about doing a general de-fluff and having a look for anything obvious, backing up regularly to prepare for the worse, and if you want to, buy a new disk. I'd been putting off doing that to my Sony laptop but finally upgraded from a full 120Gb disc to a 500Gb disc (which cost £55) and rebuilt it from scratch in November last year. Apart from it taking best part of 3 days - mainly to apply all the Windows & Office patches - it all worked fine and my machine now behaves almost like new again.

 

[danA3T]

Sorry to say so, but it's dying. It's a fairly serious hardware fault that would put it beyond economic repair and you should prepare yourself for it not turning on one day. Back up your important stuff now as you might not be able to retrieve it if it goes pop permanently one day.

A new machine will not only be faster, it'll likely be significantly more energy efficient so might save you a few quid in the long run too.

If you're feeling flush, I'd go for a Mac personally, the machines are much better built than their PC counterparts (hence the cost). I use mine upwards of 10hrs every day and it gets carried around everywhere between my clients and it's still going strong after 4 years. We have a G5 powermac and Mac mini that were both ebay specials that are knocking 7+ years old and are both on day and night.

 

[AlexGSi2000]

Will either be the PSU (Power supply unit) or the Mainboard preventing it from booting when cold. My bet is the mainboard.

It will be hard to come by/expensive to purchase a mainboard that would support the rest of the hardware (processor, ram).etc if its 8 years old, so will be more cost effective to replace the machine.
Bit of a plug - but I build bespoke systems for people, if you are interested, send me a pm!

 

[TFSI]

Thank's for the reply's guys. The old girl has been disk cleaned and de-fragged on a regular basis and in warm weather it boots perfectly.

Everything important has been transferred to our 6 month old Dell laptop and then a backup of everything made. So will just plod with the old girl until the motherboard in the sky shouts for her.

The only downside will be she has a full XP MS Office on there and my new Win 7 lappy hasn't.

Thanks again.