PC Problems

[Raven]

I rarely ever shut down my PC. When I leave the house or go to bed, I usually just turn off the monitor and leave everything else running for weeks, maybe months at a time.

Every once in a while, I will turn the PC off completely. Recently, when I do that, I sometimes have some problems when starting back up. I turn the tower on, but it freezes up just before "detecting IDE drives" (and without a grinding inside the tower..sorry I don't know the technical term for what it's actually doing there). I can hit restart button on the tower, but the same thing happens. Then I try hitting the power button on the tower but that won't work, so I can't actually shut it down.

I have to resort to hitting the power switch on my box where everything is plugged in. Usually when it boots back up, I have no problems.

Anyone know why this could be happening? Is it anything I should be concerned about? BTW, running Windows XP.

[A-Husker-4-Life]

Could be your hard drive is going bad or maybe your power supply. You can test your system by unplugging your hard drive and then powering it up. It should run thru your bios system summary and then tell you something like "there is no boot drive". If thats works without freezing then your power supply is OK and your hard drives could be a problem. To test the Hard drives you need another spare HD that you know works. Plug the good drive in and start up, if it goes thru your bios summary without freezing it could be your other HD is bad ...

I hope this helps... Cheers, JJ Smitty

[Raiders Army]

I thought it was bad to leave your computer on 24/7. In the Summer, do you worry about overheating?

[Airhog]

You stress your computer everytime you turn it on. Cold booting it is the most stressfull normal event. OTOH, if you leave your computer on for 2-3 years, you have used about 200$ in electricity. So, its really personal preference...