Friend's PC goes berserk (just a story)

My friend called me a night ago at a little after midnight, I guess he was working hard on the project we were working on.

He starts screaming into the phone that his computer is on fire and that it's making popping noises. He was freaking out like it was pretty bad, but I just told him that it will likely contain itself and to make sure all the power was disconnected and shut off. About an hour or so after he called, I found myself at his house (lives quite close by) doing some sort of technological autopsy. The motherboard looked like someone had thrown grease on it and ignited it, it was pretty much scorched as with all the nodes and such. Some of the wires were kind of schorched as well, and the heatsink and cpu fan were in horrible shape. PSU was also fried and smoke-smelling.

The scenario, as he told it, was that he went to the use the restroom after putting the computer to sleep. He noticed that when he came back in to prepare to go to bed, the computer resumed its session from sleep mode and made several monotone beeps, the monitor flickered a few times, and then he noticed that the PSU began to spark fire.....and nodes were likely popping and burning and such.

Luckily, we managed to salvage the hard disk and the very pricy graphics card still worked. **

Does anyone know a cause as to why this happened or even how it could happen? The PC was custom built, but it had been running for over a year just fine.

** and BTW, does anyone know if you can put a hard disk that has a business version of XP pro installed in another PC without it locking up because of a hardware change? We need to salvage the files...

I'm still baffled at how this all happened X_x

#403768

sounds like gremlins.

for the hd, install it in another pc as the slave so you can get the files. (you could also probably just boot from it, but it would ask you to re-activate. also, it would probably take a while for the first boot-up, as it would have to build drivers for the new mobo).

#403775

If you mount the hard disk as a slave and boot to another windows installation you can easily save the files. If you have however encrypted the "My Documents" folder, you will need some messing around... last time that was the case I had to use linux.

#403776

(you could also probably just boot from it, but it would ask you to re-activate. also, it would probably take a while for the first boot-up, as it would have to build drivers for the new mobo).

#403796

Long Long time Ago.... there was one time when my PC emitted smoke !!! But then, I was kind of responsible for it.

I use to fiddle with my hardware like installing extra fans, adding removing HDDs for data transfer (never believed in floppies since 1997), so over the time I loosened a wire from one molex connector and one day it found it's way to metal part of cabinet enclosure. As I turned on my system.. Fans made strange and loud sounds and I saw light inside my cabinet and then there was smoke... I ran and pulled the plug and did everything in just time to prevent anymore psychedelic show (but my dad and bro were freaked out for next two days).

So it's really hard to tell what exactly could cause such behaviour in Custom Made PCs. It could be anything.

With branded machines you still have fair chance to blame the vendors, but with custom machine it's different story.

Nevertheless, I still prefer building custom machine.. but I've being Ultra care full. You might find me one day with my fly open but never a single stray wire or untidy stuff inside my system cabinet.

(To tell you the truth, you incident could have been mine if I hand't pulled the plug in time... I really feel sad for your friend)

#403803

um was it at all water cooled?

#403804

if your friend having trouble with his pc, let him know I have a FULLY LOADED DELL XPS that i'm willing to sale to him.

My friend called me a night ago at a little after midnight, I guess he was

working hard on the project we were working on.

He starts screaming into the phone that his computer is on fire and that it's making popping noises. He was freaking out like it was pretty bad, but I just told him that it will likely contain itself and to make sure all the power was disconnected and shut off. About an hour or so after he called, I found myself at his house (lives quite close by) doing some sort of technological autopsy. The motherboard looked like someone had thrown grease on it and ignited it, it was pretty much scorched as with all the nodes and such. Some of the wires were kind of schorched as well, and the heatsink and cpu fan were in horrible shape. PSU was also fried and smoke-smelling.

The scenario, as he told it, was that he went to the use the restroom after putting the computer to sleep. He noticed that when he came back in to prepare to go to bed, the computer resumed its session from sleep mode and made several monotone beeps, the monitor flickered a few times, and then he noticed that the PSU began to spark fire.....and nodes were likely popping and burning and such.

Luckily, we managed to salvage the hard disk and the very pricy graphics card still worked. **

Does anyone know a cause as to why this happened or even how it could happen? The PC was custom built, but it had been running for over a year just fine.

** and BTW, does anyone know if you can put a hard disk that has a business version of XP pro installed in another PC without it locking up because of a hardware change? We need to salvage the files...

I'm still baffled at how this all happened X_x

#403875

PSU short. Buy a better power supply next time 8(

#403898