On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:08:54 +0200, Grumble wrote:

Hello all,

I've been pulling my hair for 3 hours over this problem, so I thought
I'd ask in here, and see if people have had a similar problem.

I have an oldish (bought 08/2001) Socket A motherboard (ASUS A7V133-C).
The chipset fan was starting to whine after collecting dust for 6 months
(since I last cleaned it up). As I've done several times, I unscrewed
the chipset fan, partly lifted the sticker in the middle, put a drop of
vaseline oil on the fan's axis, and used a vacuum cleaner to make the
fan spin for a while. I did the same to the CPU fan.

Is that stupid? Is there a better way to treat fans when they get dirty
and start whining?

I've done clean & lube of fans, usually with the intention of using it as a
temporary measure but have rarely gotten around to the intended
replacement.:-) Vaseline oil is not a good lubricant - I'd recommend going
to a model shop and getting one of their special greases, like La
Belle's(sp?) which are used with model trains etc.

Now, when I try to boot the system, all the fans start to spin for a few
seconds (it varies from 1 to 4), then everything shuts down (I hear
strange sounds in the PSU), and the POWER LED on the front panel blinks
steadily (about 1 second on, then 1 second off) as if the PC was in some
sort of deep sleep mode.

Any idea what this means?

What happens if you press reset?

After several hours testing different combinations, I noticed that I
could boot if I unplugged my hard disk drive (uh oh!). My HDD is an IBM
Deskstar 34GXP DPTA-372050.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/desk/ds34gxp.htm

I don't understand how cleaning the fans could have damaged the HDD.

NOTE: A few weeks ago, I thought the drive was experiencing the "click
of death" (I thought it was a 75GXP, don't know if 34GXP were affected).
I downloaded the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic tool from Hitachi, and ran it for
several hours. It found no problem with the drive.

S.M.A.R.T. is useless IME. I had an IBM drive (I think 34GXP) which was in
obvious distress: heads clicking and clattering on startup but it would
settle down and the system would work fine for hours. Running the SMART
diags showed "healthy drive".:-)

I'm hoping you guys have some suggestions for me :-)

Try a fresh new IDE cable; check the HDD power connector for expansion of
the split tube pins; the HDD power is not coming from a Y-adapter is it?...
some of those have real junky metal in the pins but try a different power
connector anyway.

Whatever you end up with, I'd get your files off that HDD and onto a new
one... tout de bloody suite.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??