Fou-Lu
02-06-2008, 02:57 AM
Quick story.
I haven't had a chance to see for myself yet as I was just contacted tonight; however, my aunt called and told me she is having problems with her PC (Windows Media Center). Seems its stuck in an infinite reboot cycle (yay, my favorite -_-), but she also mentioned that a couple weeks ago it smelled like something was burning (burning dust like when you turn your furnace on for the first time in the year), but wasn't certain if it was from the computer. The reboot is standard, makes it to the windows boot screen, shuts down, and then restarts with a standard shutdown correctly from the start menu message. I've only been stuck in this situation once, but when that did happen I recall that I did not receive the incorrectly shutdown message screen.
My initial thoughts of course went to a software related problem. But, with the 'smell' from the PC, I'm almost leaning towards a hardware failure of some sorts, be it a disk or fan problem. Overheating could be an issue, but it seems a little on the quick side for a hardware problem.
I am curious if anyone here has had a similar experience in the past, hopefully to give me some pointers to if I should start looking into a software issue first, or a hardware issue first. It would be nice if anyone can give some tips in which direction to go before I jump into the problem.
I haven't had a chance to see for myself yet as I was just contacted tonight; however, my aunt called and told me she is having problems with her PC (Windows Media Center). Seems its stuck in an infinite reboot cycle (yay, my favorite -_-), but she also mentioned that a couple weeks ago it smelled like something was burning (burning dust like when you turn your furnace on for the first time in the year), but wasn't certain if it was from the computer. The reboot is standard, makes it to the windows boot screen, shuts down, and then restarts with a standard shutdown correctly from the start menu message. I've only been stuck in this situation once, but when that did happen I recall that I did not receive the incorrectly shutdown message screen.
My initial thoughts of course went to a software related problem. But, with the 'smell' from the PC, I'm almost leaning towards a hardware failure of some sorts, be it a disk or fan problem. Overheating could be an issue, but it seems a little on the quick side for a hardware problem.
I am curious if anyone here has had a similar experience in the past, hopefully to give me some pointers to if I should start looking into a software issue first, or a hardware issue first. It would be nice if anyone can give some tips in which direction to go before I jump into the problem.