- Consider one very important exception to the 50 percent rule: If your hard disk drive fails, and you don’t have backups of your irreplaceable data, it may make sense to pay hundreds of dollars to a professional disk-rescue company, which often (but not always) can extract data from failed drives.. - Repairing the Monitor. - W ith the birth of the personal computer, we’ve all come to use the monitor (or dis- play) as the window into the hard electronic soul of the device. - You can call these devices either monitors or displays, as I do in this book. - Check the Display. - Troubleshoot the Display. - Check and Change Display Settings in Windows XP. - Check and Change Display Settings in Windows 7. - Troubleshoot a Video Adapter in Windows XP. - Adapter in Windows 7. - But what do you do when the lights won’t go on? In this chapter, I show you how to fix some common problems with monitors.. - Sometimes the light glows one color when the power is on but no signal is being. - If the monitor is turned on but the indicator light isn’t lit, examine the power cord to make sure that it’s con- nected to both the monitor and its source of power. - (If you have an LCD screen, you may have to check three or four plugs connecting the wall outlet, the power adapter, and the display.). - If you have an older CRT, check the brightness, contrast, and other manual controls. - then turn the monitor back on. - Did you see any hint of light as the power came on? Did you hear the high voltage energizing the CRT tube? Also, place the back of your hand close to the screen to feel for static electricity. - If the monitor passes one or more of these tests, the power supply is working, the monitor has high voltage, and your problem probably is in the cable or the computer.. - With the monitor turned on, press one of the moni- tor configuration buttons, probably on the front, on the side, or covered by a trap door. - If you do, the monitor has power, and the screen is working. - The problem must be in the cable connection or in your computer.. - Trouble with video output from your computer:. - I cover this situation in “Troubleshoot a Video Adapter” and “Reset a Video Driver,” later in this chapter.. - Trouble with the video connections: You may find a crimp, break, or other fault in the connec- tors on the PC or the display, or in the cable that runs between them (see Figure 8-1). - One possible indicator of a problem with a cable or connector on an analog link is the loss of one or two of the primary colors (red, green, and blue) that are combined to produce other hues.. - The problem may be either the video adapter on the motherboard or a setting that you changed in the video adapter’s driver or in Windows.. - If you see a startup screen in your version of Windows, your monitor and cable probably work.. - If you see a blue screen on startup — a condition called the Blue Screen of Death (or Doom. - See “Beat the Blue Screen of Death,” later in this chapter.. - Restart your computer in safe mode, which automatically uses a very basic video setting. - When Windows is loaded, choose Start➪Control Panel, and change the video set- tings back to an acceptable set of parameters (see “Check and Change Display Settings,” later in this chapter). - (Maybe you have another computer in your home or can take your monitor to a friend’s house.) If the monitor delivers the proper image, you know to concentrate your attention on your computer.. - (Some cables, though, are attached permanently at the monitor end.). - A slight misalignment of the plug can produce a short that could damage the video adapter, monitor, motherboard, or all three devices. - Turn off both the monitor and the computer before making any cabling changes.. - If the problem doesn’t recur, consider yourself lucky — for the moment. - The files for your computer’s installation of Windows may have been damaged (in technical terms, corrupted) as the result of a problem with the hard disk, an electrical spike that got past your surge protector and into the computer, or a computer virus (see Chapter 6). - Check and Change Display Settings in Windows XP and Vista. - Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Properties from the shortcut menu, or choose. - Start➪Control Panel and double-click the Display icon.. - The Display Properties dialog box opens.. - Click the Settings tab. - You see the screen resolution and color quality that your video adapter is using (see Figure 8-4).. - If you can’t check a problem with your video adapt- er’s device driver (see the appropriate section for your version of Windows later in this chapter) or made an error in choosing adapter settings, you’re caught in a conundrum — a computer Catch-22. - How do you troubleshoot a device when you need to use that device to see the screen? Here’s how: Restart your computer in safe mode and then perform the steps in this section. - Right-click anywhere on the desktop, and choose. - Personalize from the shortcut menu. - Click Display in the bottom-left corner to open the Display screen.. - Click Adjust Resolution on the left side of the Display screen. - Click the Advanced Settings link to open the Advanced Settings dialog box.. - Click the Monitor tab, and make a choice from the Colors drop-down menu in the bottom-left corner (see Figure 8-7).. - Close both of the windows.. - Troubleshoot a Video Adapter in Windows XP and Vista. - Choose Start➪Control Panel, and double-click the System icon. - Click the Hardware tab.. - Click the plus sign. - next to the Display Adapters list- ing to expand it. - Click the General tab (see Figure 8-9), and check the Device Status box to see whether the system is reporting a problem. - If so, click the Troubleshoot button, and fol- low the onscreen instructions. - Troubleshoot a Video Adapter in Windows 7. - Click the Device Manager link under the Devices and Printers heading. - Click the General tab, and check the Device Status box to see whether the system is reporting a problem. - If so, click the Troubleshoot button, and follow the onscreen. - Follow the steps in “Troubleshoot a Video Adapter” for your version of Windows, earlier in this chapter, to open the adapter’s Properties dialog box.. - Click the Driver tab to display settings like the ones shown in Figure 8-10.. - Click the appropriate button:. - Disable: Don’t click this button unless you have more than one video adapter in your system. - With your only video adapter disabled, you wouldn’t be able to view your computer’s data.. - A word of existential warning: If you choose the Uninstall option for your default video adapter, you may be unable to view the screen, because the adapter won’t be able to communicate with Windows. - “Check and Change Display Settings” for your version of Windows, earlier in this chapter, to roll back to the preceding driver or reinstall a driver.. - Reduce the display resolution. - Try reducing the resolution (see “Check and Change Display Settings” for your version of Windows, earlier in this chapter) to see whether problems go away. - If so, consider adding more RAM to the system. - So in this chapter, I cover the two remaining types of prob- lems: electrical and mechanical (except for hard drives, which are the subject of Chapter 11). - Power Supply. - Diagnose a Failing Power Supply. - If a circuit breaker has shut off current to the outlet, try to determine what caused it to close down. - Are the computer’s fans and drives still running? If so, that fact may indicate that the power supply is still functioning. - On the other hand, if none of the comput- er’s indicator lights, fans, or other electrical parts seems to be alive, the power supply may not be supplying.. - Do you smell anything? Often, the first sign of impending doom is a whiff of the particular acrid odor of fried electronics. - Do you see anything? Electrical scorch marks or melted wiring are possible signs of a failure of the power supply.. - If you see smoke (or flames), immediately turn off the computer by using the switch on your surge pro- tector or removing the electrical cord from the wall socket. - Research a Replacement Power Supply. - Locate the power supply, which is almost always a large metallic box in a corner of the case (see Figure 9-1).. - Power supply. - You can also look for the point where the electrical cord from the wall current attaches to the computer and follow it to the power supply at the other end, inside the case.. - Make note of any model information and specifications that you find on the power supply.. - Write down the details about the power supply’s form fac- tor, a term that refers to the size and shape of the power supply and the way it bolts to the case. - ATX: In this design, a 20-pin connector delivers power to the motherboard, and a separate 4-pin cable and connector together deliver the same set of voltages and control circuits to the microproces- sor (see Figure 9-2).. - BTX: A 24-pin connector goes directly to a 24-pin receptacle on the motherboard. - Cables and connectors of an ATX power supply. - The power supply has to produce at least the minimum amount of wattage to power the motherboard and everything else attached to the system.. - Look for this information on the manufacturer’s label, like the one shown in Figure 9-3.. - If you replace a 500-watt power supply with a 750-watt unit, for example, you need to know whether your computer is capable of exhausting the extra heat that the larger unit will produce. - Make a list of the types of connectors your computer uses and the number. - P1 connector: A modern computer has one main connector from a standard power supply to the motherboard. - It’s the largest and most important of the cables and connectors running from the power supply. - You can see in Figure 9-4 that this connector is very large compared with anything else on the mother- board. - You should have no problem finding that connector again if you’re reconnecting the existing power supply or installing a new one.. - If you have a really old computer (one that was put into service more than a decade ago), it may use an AT power supply. - This design brings power to the motherboard through two separate sets of cables and connectors, labeled P8 and P9 (see Figure 9-5).
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