Tip of the Month

If your computer is automatically shutting itself down and doesn’t go through the usual shut down procedure (unless caused by a black out etc or is only a single occurrence which could have been caused by a power outage in your house), this is generally a sign of problems with the power supply or a CPU that is over heating. Jobs that involve power supply replacements usually cost about $80 and given overheating issues are generally created by dust. We can generally clean out a computer for $25 to $40.

However if these problems are left to continue for too long what would be a cheap fix turns into an expensive fix. Power supplies can often take out other parts with them. The worst case scenario we have ever had just happened recently when we had to replace a motherboard and two or more hard drives as well. Fortunately it is usually only the motherboard that suffers (but even they end up being expensive given motherboard replacements often require a reformat), but it illustrates how a $85 job can turn into one that costs $300+.

CPUs have a feature built in where if they get too hot they automatically shut the computer down, and this is designed to stop damage to the CPU. However this feature should be thought of as a temporary measure that helps avoid disaster, rather than a method that will keep you out of trouble forever. A simple $25 to $40 job can turn into one that costs $200+ because the CPU is usually the most expensive item in the machine.

Note that the computer shutting down by itself is different to a computer that automatically restarts. When a computer automatically restarts abnormally (ie. when it doesn’t go through the normal shut down procedure before restarting) it is generally because the computer is set to automatically restart when it encounters the Blue Screen of Death. While these can be indicative of hardware issues, more often than not they are problems with drivers (software) and generally don’t require such urgent attention, except that the more often a computer fails to restart properly the higher the risk of  corrupted files etc, and therefore sometimes blue screens result in having to reformat the computer, so we don’t want to encourage delay in these instances either. However, the risk isn’t as high when the computer automatically restarts itself as opposed to situations where a computer automatically turns itself off, and therefore this advice is aimed mainly at automatic shut downs as much as it can apply to computers that automatically restart themselves.