This morning my husband turned on my computer. He often does this if he’s up before me and he hears me moving around upstairs. My usual routine is to get up, get myself a coffee and sit at the desktop computer and check my email as I wake up.
My routine was severely altered this morning!
Chris turned my computer on and said “Oh oh …” and you know anything that starts with Oh oh is not going to be good. “your computers making a sound that I just know you’re not going to like” he said. I called downstairs “What do you mean? I can’t hear it from here. What is it doing?”
He didn’t really say, he just kept telling me that I wasn’t going to be happy with the noise. Then he said I think it’s the fan.
As I came down the stairs I could hear the noise. It was a high pitched whirrrrrring noise. He was right. I didn’t like that sound at all.
Chris took the side panel off the computer and figured that it was the fan on the power supply that was making the noise.
Ok, that’s not too bad. We’ll take the computer to Best Buy or Future Shop and get a new power supply for it. We had to replace a power supply for our old computer a few years ago after a power failure zapped it. It had been easy to find the right replacement and the computer was only down for a few hours. No problem.
Chris went off with the computer and I got on the laptop to check my email.
Chris came back a couple of hours later. Much later than I thought he’d be. It turns out that the power supply in our 2003 HP Media center computer is a very special one, much smaller than most and only made by one company that supplies HP directly. Arghhh.
We got on the laptop and started to see if we could find HP parts dealers in the Toronto area, or if the HP parts store carried the power supply that we needed. HP telephone support is only open Monday to Friday so we couldn’t talk with anyone and I couldn’t find the model number on their power supply parts page. None of the computer supply stores we called could get the part either.
What a drag! Chris also told me that one of the people he talked with at Best Buy or Future shop had said the power supply would cost about $140 bucks. Much more expensive than the last power supply that we had to buy for our old old computer. I started to think, gee we could get a whole new computer for about $500 at the most. What should we do?
We decided to check for the part on eBay and we got lucky and found it. So now I’ve made my first ever eBay purchase ($36 with shipping!) and I hope that the part we got really is the correct one. It’s got the right part number but the photo’s looked a little different than what our own power supply looks like. I guess we’ll see in about a week when it arrives.
So I guess I’ll be using only my laptop for the next week or so. It’s unfortunately that all my saved emails are on my desktop, and all the info about money I’ve been making and so on. I guess we could plug in the faulty computer and move some of that info to this computer. The desktop still works but we’re pretty sure that that sound means failure is imminent. Plus, if the fan isn’t working properly the computer could over heat and get damaged. That would be much worse than not having access to some of my stored info for a few days, so I think we’ll just leave it turned off for now.
Don’t pay the $140 yet! Take a pic of the power supply and email it to me. I own a computer repair center in Nebraska and we keep a bone year of weird power supplies. I might have one I can send you! post or email the pic – which ever is easier for you.
I hope it gets fixed cheaply for you. I hate it when parts break and you can’t afford a new pc.
Oh, that really sucks! Hope they get it to you quickly and that it fixes you back up!
I discovered last spring when my OfficeJet needed a minor repair that HP doesn’t have any parts availble on the island for their imaging and faxing equipment. It was oging to take a week to ten days to get a part to me – but they wouldn’t send it because they also don’t have authorized repair techs on the island. But that’s not the worst – I had to replace it with another HP OfficeJet because – you guessed it – it was the only all-in-one I could get on the island! how sucky is that? I’m in a business that is dependent on my issuing hard copies of reports, so I had no choice but to rplace.
bummer. That’s the trouble with buying proprietary things. You are usually at the mercy of the manufacturer. Building your own, or getting someone to build a computer for you is a great alternative.
Glad you have a backup computer! I’ve lost important files before, so any strange noises my computer makes, I’d go into that natural panic, even though I back up a lot of things. Glad it’s only the power strip, but it’s a shame it will be so costly.
laptops are always harder to fix. a lot of times if your model is out a few years they stop making the parts and you just have to buy a new one. Good thing you’ve got a desky!
Oh oops! I’m content dyslexic. Bad desktop! 🙁