My 64 bit Mesh machine switches off after about 10 sec.

In a word. S*IT.

I would guess that of all the compunents to go short an elecrolytic is the culprit.

see if there is a bulgy one around

But a mobo isnt as expensive as the RAM and CPU that goes in it.

But befier that remove all peripehrals 0 disks etc - ram chips and pci cards etc and see if the psu dies then

Changing a motherboard (unless it is to one of exactly the same type, with all the same make of devices such as graphics, disk controller, USB controller etc) may cause the PC to blue screen because the drivers don't match the devices.

One though that I don't think has been mentioned: is the CPU fan spinning at full speed? There may be a shutdown (to protect the CPU) is the fan isn't detected to be running at the right speed. 3 seconds is a bit soon for the over-temperature sensor in the CPU to kick in, but could be about right for a fan speed detector.

only if its running winders |:)

To be fair to Microsoft, I have made big changes - even going from Intel architecture to AMD and vice-versa and it just boots, automatically loads the right drivers and carries on working.

I never leave it like that though, prefering to do a clean install after major changes.

SteveW

That will be more than the computer is worth. It's 10 years old, so unless it has a Firewire port which is used for something I would get a newer one.

A 500watt PS should be plenty powerful enough for most purposes.

If you must get a new P/S, go for one with a higher efficiency rating, described as "80+" gold/white/bronze etc

Me again! I am now faced with the problem of accessing the data on the Mesh machine hard drive which has two NTFS partitions, one for the OS and the largest one for the data. I have a 64 bit machine running Linux Mint which has a spare SATA port to which I can connect the ex. Mesh hard drive but I suspect that Linux will not directly read the data files? I believe the Linux kernel may have a sequence that will read NTFS files... Can anyone help me here?

Kind regards... Richard

For read-only access to an NTFS volume (provided it was cleanly dismounted) you should get on ok with the kernel ntfs driver, if you want to write (or delete) files then the ntfs-3g fuse driver is probably a better bet ... all assuming mint comes with the drivers ....

I would add (as is my theme) that they tend to be more efficient, offsetting the higher initial cost after a while.

It should

Pretty sure NTFS is pretty commonly avialable and directly recognised by Mint

you will need to issue the appropriate mount command, or in fact the GUI file manager may be able to do that in a point and clcky way. .

Just pop them in the sata drive bays plug em in and boot linux

See what pops up in the deafult file manager

Kernel level is OK for NTFS for sire.

it does

This may be helpful

Hello all, and once again thanks for your invaluable help with this problem... We have now, and thanks again, recovered all our sensitive data from the Mesh hdd (we spent the best part of all yesterday (Friday) working with the interim computer) and our objective now is to obtain a replacement machine in due course.

Kindest regards to all... Richard (and Jenny).

Hi Dennis... Yes indeed!! GOT IT! I had, only two weeks prior to this 'event' said to my wife 'we MUST put in place a rigorous backup process/regime'... Oh dear... Good intentions?? Thanks for the reinforcement! Kind regards... Richard.

By far the simplest approach is Backup and Sync from Google. That backs up your hard drive in real time and saves it to the cloud (where Google can analyse your data to its heart's content, of course). Unless you pay for storage, you need to limit it to 5-10GB. That's enough for all my important documents, but not enough for everything on my PC of course. So, I'm quite selective about which directories are backed up and where I store stuff. That provides reasonable protection against a house fire or theft of the PC, but not against a virus that encrypts the data.

There are similar services for photos, IIRC, with unlimited storage.

Apart from that, I mirror the hard disks with RAID 1. (That's not backup but very useful.)

I also copy all the important docs to a series of USB drives that I use in rotation then disconnect. They provide reasonable backup against viruses encrypting, but not fire or theft. I do this *almost* every day, but it's not perfect. ;)

I copy files to USB drives (so I've got two copies of the files: one on the PC's HDD and one on the external) and I *try* to remember to remove the external drive and keep it in the fire safe when I'm not backing up, though it's tedious doing that because the safe is in the garage - a separate building so *maybe* one that will survive if the house burns down.

I use Microsoft SyncToy to do the incremental backup. I'm sure there are plenty of other programs that do the same job.