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My computer’s tripping

captain piss

11:26 / 27.02.02

The background colour keeps flickering across a variety of unusual shades, like mauve and plum, and when I load Outlook Express it sounds like a sample from an Atari Teenage Riot song, combined with the EEEEEeee noise you used to get when you tried to load ZX Spectrum computer games.
Other than that it works fine.

Any ideas?
Could this be a virus????

Ariadne

11:53 / 27.02.02

Um. Save things. Onto disks or to your hotmail account. Just in case...

Re-Set

12:03 / 27.02.02

Poltergeists.

Check all the connections, especially your sound card and display. Dis- and reconnect them anyway. Make sure the innards of the machine are fairly dust-free, and Degauss the monitor. Most importantly, look around the computer for anything that might be generating a magnetic field. Speakers and other electronics nearby can mess with sound and display, as well as potentially nuke any/all data. You can e-mail me if none of that works, it could be settings within the OS.

It's almost certainly not a virus.

sleazenation

12:05 / 27.02.02

personally i think the problem stems from using ASICs instead of FPGAs...

Ariadne

12:07 / 27.02.02

Hey, sleaze can spell FPGA at last!

sleazenation

12:10 / 27.02.02

I'm willing to learn even the minutiae of component electronics if it gets one of my comic strips published...

Ariadne

12:12 / 27.02.02

Do you think we could stretch it out to a series? We could build in a mosfet side story?

sleazenation

12:14 / 27.02.02

we could have a steamy series of mating cycles between consenting connectors,,, we should stop this now.

Ariadne

12:15 / 27.02.02

Phew, I need a heat sink.... sorry, Meme Buggerer, we're not really helping, are we?

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:56 / 27.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Ariadne:
Phew, I need a heat sinkWow. I always had you picked as a fan-cooled kinda gal...

Ahem.

Sounds a bit like a fucked-up video card thing to me. Don't know what the sound could be... maybe do a poke around online for some system diagnostics? download.com might have something that would help?

[ 27-02-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]

captain piss

13:32 / 27.02.02

Ahhh, the sound's okay now- but there's still some funny stuff going on with the monitor- things flicking into negative then a variety of colours without warning.

I'll follow some of the diagnostic steps recommended - thanks for the offer of emailed advice Mr Spider, I may be in touch.

Ahh, I love it when you 2 talk technical < rubs thighs>
Baffled thread-readers should be aware that Sleaze, Ariadne & I once formed the editorial dept of that stout and trusty organ Components in Electronics magazine- it's an in-joke free-for-all

Fist Fun

15:37 / 27.02.02

Sounds like a dodgy hard disk. That is the only thing that would explain the noise.

The Return Of Rothkoid

15:51 / 27.02.02

Depends: if it were, I would've thought it would've crashed by now. Could be the monitor trying to scan at a frequency that it's not designed for? Try the system's video card diagnostics, perhaps?

Fist Fun

07:36 / 28.02.02

Yeah, true. I've only ever heard weird noises from a hard disk though.
Tell us more, tell us more MB. I love it when Barbelith goes all geeky. Well even more geeky than usual anyway.

captain piss

08:36 / 28.02.02

Heheh- well you might be sorry you asked...

Have now left bedroom based PC in disgust - there's actually quite a lot more wrong with it than just optical strangeness- but hey, I don't want to bore you all. Me old work are letting me use their computers cos I'm still doing some stuff for them, and I'm in a deadline-frenzy

I've a feeling the monitor connection might be a good thing to check first - got one of these fangled TFT thingies, which are apparently prone to spacing-out if there's a bad connection (mind you that wouldn't explain the buggered sound)- I'll do that next

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