Right, well, I built this PC a month or so ago (first build) and it's been ticking along brilliantly until about a week ago, and I'm starting to get a little worried about it.
First off, it stopped going on standby when I asked it to. It was quite content to sit at the 'Preparing to stand by' screen for hours at a time (I just quickly hit the standby button and left the PC a few times, only to come back and find it still on) and do absolutely nothing. This happens every now and then...maybe 1/4 of the times I try putting it on standby.
Secondly, when it comes off standby, it occasionally tells me that 'a cable has been unplugged' from the Realtek HD Audio Manager box. No cable has been unplugged, and the Realtek HD is a chip on the motherboard that I'm not even able to remove, so I don't understand that message. I can't get any sound out of the PC after this message displays, but a restart cures this problem.
Thirdly, the hard drive has started making some dreadful sounding choking noises. You know the noise that hard drive makes when it's spinning up when you boot up the PC? It's taken to doing that repeatedly at times, most often when its trying to shut down, but even if I leave a DVD paused for 5 minutes or so and then come back. The whole PC freezes up. This is the major worry, of course - I feel I've had my share of hard drive problems, and I'm not looking for any more. It's a 320Gb Hitachi Deskstar. I'm going to back up everything important as soon as I have time, likely at the weekend.
Fourthly (is that a word?), when I was playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines today, or more correctly just after I quit the game, the PC restarted. For no reason. It's never done this before. When it came back on, the CPU fan was (and still is) going at full pelt, whereas usually it isn't even on when the PC is idling, or on the internet, or similar. It's maybe at 400rpm max, but just now it's at 2400+, with the temperatures of the cores in the mid-twenties. It's been doing this fan-speed thing more and more often of late too, and nothing seems to get the fan to reset back to a less audible speed, short of perhaps turning off the PC and turning it back on again.
I'm annoyed, and a little worried about this. My old PC had plenty of problems within the last year or so, and I was hoping I'd left them all behind when I got this new one. If any more specs or information are required, let me know.
Thanks in advance
tTz
First off, it stopped going on standby when I asked it to. It was quite content to sit at the 'Preparing to stand by' screen for hours at a time (I just quickly hit the standby button and left the PC a few times, only to come back and find it still on) and do absolutely nothing. This happens every now and then...maybe 1/4 of the times I try putting it on standby.
Secondly, when it comes off standby, it occasionally tells me that 'a cable has been unplugged' from the Realtek HD Audio Manager box. No cable has been unplugged, and the Realtek HD is a chip on the motherboard that I'm not even able to remove, so I don't understand that message. I can't get any sound out of the PC after this message displays, but a restart cures this problem.
Thirdly, the hard drive has started making some dreadful sounding choking noises. You know the noise that hard drive makes when it's spinning up when you boot up the PC? It's taken to doing that repeatedly at times, most often when its trying to shut down, but even if I leave a DVD paused for 5 minutes or so and then come back. The whole PC freezes up. This is the major worry, of course - I feel I've had my share of hard drive problems, and I'm not looking for any more. It's a 320Gb Hitachi Deskstar. I'm going to back up everything important as soon as I have time, likely at the weekend.
Fourthly (is that a word?), when I was playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines today, or more correctly just after I quit the game, the PC restarted. For no reason. It's never done this before. When it came back on, the CPU fan was (and still is) going at full pelt, whereas usually it isn't even on when the PC is idling, or on the internet, or similar. It's maybe at 400rpm max, but just now it's at 2400+, with the temperatures of the cores in the mid-twenties. It's been doing this fan-speed thing more and more often of late too, and nothing seems to get the fan to reset back to a less audible speed, short of perhaps turning off the PC and turning it back on again.
I'm annoyed, and a little worried about this. My old PC had plenty of problems within the last year or so, and I was hoping I'd left them all behind when I got this new one. If any more specs or information are required, let me know.

Thanks in advance
tTz