(OT) Hard Disk burned up!

[Soule]

I wonder whether I can seek help here..

After shifting the hard disk to above the power supply, setting it from primary IDE master to secondary IDE master, the hard disk caught fire(short circuited) when powering up! This sounds far-fetched but really happened!I quickly switched it off when I smelt burning and a red glow.

Could anyone give any theories why it happened?

The hard disk is a Maxtor 20 G and a week ago, it showed a general hard disk failure once. Could it be a cause. This is the first time a hard disk burnt on me...

[dag]

hey, hey!

methinks this issue does not belong here!
those topics are far too mundane to fit our spirits!
thou must try and goto some earthlike-hardware
sites elsewhere.
by the virtues, there are lots of them!

dag

[wjp]

Heh, I've had this happen with a USB port... it literally caught fire too. (Luckily, the rest of the motherboard still worked fine)

[SB-X]

error: lp1 on fire

[Darkfist Dragon]

Yep. Exult is a hot game, I'd say.

[Eric]

What's your "grounding" like? Also, what's your power connection like (power bar, power bar w/ breaker, surge breaker power bar, UPS, or just very dangerously plugged simply into your wall outlet)? Any sort of power spike has a chance of frying your computer components. Alternately, how clean is your computer (computers get VERY VERY dusty)? What's the ventilation like? How hot is the air usually inside your computer?

Though if you really wanna see a show, try putting a CPU in the wrong way and turning on your computer (like I did when I first started learning about computers), ~hehe~

[Meat Shield]

I wonder if the BeOS port of Exult checks the is_computer_on(fire()?

[Darkfist Dragon]

Or someone casted "Vas Flam Drive!"

[Darke]

Or if it executes the HCF opcode (Halt & Catch Fire).

[Skutarth]

Maybe the blue screen of death caught you in Windows? (Thank god for XP!)

Or maybe your computer malfunctioned and it used this fake C line:

Void;
Void;
Void;
Void;
Void;
!MALFUNCTION! <---Guess I'm too late, darn.

[suraimu]

> Maybe the blue screen of death caught you in Windows? (Thank god for XP!)

You act as if XP doesn't have a blue screen of death.

[Skutarth]

I haven't seen it yet if there is one...

[Eric]

Most OS crashes are a result of the stupidity of humans. It is ill-fated to purchase a computer without being computer literate. Although XP is quite stable, I have seen it do memory dumps, and I have seen it lock up (all you need is your average computer user to do the job).

If you want to take the first step towards looking after your computer, try taking a look at your event log. Once you've spent several hours clearing up all of the problems in the event log, try updating all of your hardware and software to the latest drivers for your OS. And then there's the all too neglected disk-defrag. While you're at it, open up your computer and clean it up, also remember the power supply fan. Buy a surge protector bar for your computer too. And I cannot stress enough, DO NOT USE POWER SAVING ON YOUR HARD DRIVES. It is much much easier on your hard drive to keep it spinning whilst the computer is turned on. Oh, and don't plug/unplug PS/2 devices while your computer is turned on, you're only allowed to do that with serial and USB devices (trust me, I've seen people wreck their motherboards by doing that).

Anyway, those are some of the easier things to do, and is doesn't require a genious to carry them out either. It's like the saying goes, if you give respect, you get respect. Treat her bad, and she'll give ya attitude like she's in PMS.

[Dominus]

Blue screen and XP: well it might seem you never saw one as XP by default reboots instead of showing the bluescreen.

[Eric]

Actually, the blue screeen is the memory dump (I should've been more clear). If you like you can configure XP not to automatically reboot about memory dump by going into the Advanced tab of your System Properties and going into the Startup and Recovery options.

I used to set my system not to automatically reboot so that I could troubleshoot all errors (memory dumps arn't registered in the event log) cuz I was kinda the perfectionist paronoid about my computer, but since I've eased down a lot.

[Eric]

Yes, XP Crashes, but no where near as much as Windows 98 or ME!

Or rather, XP freezes from time to time (bout once every two months), and I hit the reset button. All other times my system has recoverd, and I have never seen a blue screen of death for XP.

Your saying XP Automatically resets it'self? Never for me - normally manages to close the programmme and you can simply reload.

Maybe your version has issues.......

[SB-X]

I've used HDD power saving features for years and it has never caused any harm.

[Eric]

Doing tech support I've come across XP issues for users that I've supported. For myself I haven't had XP crash, but I have had Win2k crash on occasion. Usually, through MS knowledgebase articles (great resource by the way) I can troubleshoot the problems and prevent future issues and conflicts on their systems. I agree that Win9x and WinME are more buggy than XP, I never stated that XP was more buggy. My greatest pet peeve about Win9x is how vulnerable it is to memory leaks.

If you manage your computer properly your computer shouldn't crash (mine hasn't in a year and a half). And depending on whether you installed XP yourself or your computer came shipped with XP it may or may not be set to automatically reboot itself upon memory dump, need the rare occasion ever come. For most occasions you should be able to terminate the application through the task manager.

Personally, I love Win2k and WinXP, but I can't go against my opinion from what I've actually seen users' do to their systems.

Anyways, people are gonna start saying that I'm contributing to spamming by posting another message in this topic so this is my last one here.

[nadir]

Is that a year and a half without reboots ? Or is that turning it on in the morning and off in the evening ? If that's the case then it's not really a good case for it. If, however, you have XP boxes with uptimes > 100 days, prove me wrong

[Darke]

PawNote: If you don't use it at all, it might stay up that long. *grin*

I've not managed to keep a win2k box up for (continually) more then a week when used as a gaming box, playing mostly 'new release' games on it, and most of the time it froze/bluescreened/rebooted within 3 days. (This was before I moved to linux permanantly as my primary machine.)

And a friend who's also using similar hardware/software/knowledge hasn't managed to keep XP (Professional) up much longer.

Yes, this is with the 'most stable' set of drivers for the video/sound/mobo (not necessarily the fastest), also with good quality piece bought hardware, none of it overclocked, and games patched up to the latest most 'bug free' versions.

I should prod him for his uptime stats for the XP and RedHat boxes where he works at uni (all 500 of them), although I do know (from experience, since I've got a win2k box I play games on), that one set of boxes _is_ going to be up longer, and it ain't going to be 2k/XP. *grin*