One of the other things I'd do, sooner rather than later, is to remove the hard drive from that PC, and either install it in another PC (like the ham shack machine) or in a USB hard drive enclosure, and see if the drive is recognized at all on the other PC. If it is, then copy over to the other PC everything on it that you consider not replaceable, while you can. The drive may not be dead, but if it's in any way physically damaged, it's only going to get worse, never better, and it's demise will probably happen pretty quickly. If it's actually not damaged, at least you got a backup of the important stuff, something very few home PC users actually do.
Hope that helps, and 73 Bob, KD7NM On Monday 21 July 2008 19:27:23 Andrew O'Brien wrote: > Please excuse the non-ham question but hopefully folks here will have > an idea or two. > > > One of my household PCs (not the ham PC thankfully) was dropped during > a move to another room . Out spilled the memory cards , wireless PCI > card, and the CPU heatsink fan. After reinstalling I get the PC to > briefly boot up and then it shuts it's self down. The shutdown is > too quick to get a any beep codes, the first couple of attempts I > heard a European siren-type noise for a few seconds. Anyone here have > any guesses what the issue would be? I wonder about CPU overheating > but the fan snapped nicely back in to place and the fan appears to > work fine. Any chance the bang to the PC would cause the CPU heatsink > to lose a seal with the CPU? I have not taken the CPU heatsink off > yet, it looks firmly in pace and apart from some dust in the heatsink > fins, it looks OK. > > On the most recent attempt I took one of the memory sticks out and the > PC boot-up lasted long enough to tell me that the "firmware had > detected a change in memory configuration" Then I briefly got the > flashed message about pressing a F -Key if I wanted to access the BIOS > . Then it closed down. I am taking that as a sign the hardrive was > briefly accessed. > > I am wondering if one would get similar symptoms if the power supply > was somehow damaged during the fall ? > > Andy > > ------------------------------------ > > Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at > http://www.obriensweb.com/sked > > Check our other Yahoo Groups.... > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dxlist/ > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/contesting > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup > Yahoo! Groups Links > > >
