PC trouble please help

devonwoody · 29 Dec 2011

I think Ishorted my desktop this morning,

the ethenet cable I withdrew and it touched the casing of desktop or

the router cable live touched the casing.

The desktop power shut off and when attempting to switch on the PC fans run for around 3 seconds and everything shuts down again.

What do you think as happened?

Also now using an old laptop and the @ sign will not display at the correct key position on keyboard, I have to use shift and the numeral 2 on top numbers row, how do I correct this as well please?

Looking for a new computer perhaps but not apple any good sales lead around W7 professional?

JakeS · 29 Dec 2011

devonwoody":221moh6j said:
I think Ishorted my desktop this morning,

the ethenet cable I withdrew and it touched the casing of desktop or

the router cable live touched the casing.

I'm doubtful either of those things could cause a problem - the ethernet cable doesn't have voltages high enough to damage the PC just by touching the casing, and power cables for routers and otherwise should have the live terminal safely ensconced within a protective sheath, otherwise people would be giving themselves electric shocks touching the ends of power cables by accident all the time.

It's probably an unrelated failure, although from your description it doesn't sound nice! The one thing I've seen before which sometimes causes trouble a little bit like that is with USB drives, sometimes a PC will be set up to try and boot off USB, so if you leave any USB drives, SD cards or whatever in your PC it may not boot. If you have anything like that, it's worth taking it out and trying again before giving up on it! (In fact, that's generally good advice; if you have trouble with your PC, disconnect everything except the keyboard and monitor, and if it works like that, re-attach devices one by one until you find the culprit.)

devonwoody":221moh6j said:
Also now using an old laptop and the @ sign will not display at the correct key position on keyboard, I have to use shift and the numeral 2 on top numbers row, how do I correct this as well please?

This is keyboard locale settings - the Merkians use Shift-2 to get the '@' sign. On a Windows machine go to Control Panel, Regional and Language Options (a globe with a clock in front), and on the 'Keyboards and Languages' tab hit 'Change Keyboards' and select 'English (United Kingdom)'. After you've done this you can select 'English (US)' in the tree below and delete it. (The process may be slightly different on different versions of Windows, but that's more or less what you're after.)

devonwoody · 29 Dec 2011

thanks I will give it a try.

Some good news, a rebuild of my pc might come in at #400 with dual core and 8gb ram and 7 professional 64 bit.

someone is coming in this afternoon to see if he can restart the old pc as well.

devonwoody · 29 Dec 2011

JakeS, I ried your remedy on my PC (all leads out) and got a boot up, things seem to be working this afternoon OK.

Many thanks and I wish you a very happy new year. :wink:

JakeS · 29 Dec 2011

devonwoody":3umscfqc said:
JakeS, I ried your remedy on my PC (all leads out) and got a boot up, things seem to be working this afternoon OK.

Many thanks and I wish you a very happy new year. :wink:

And the same to you - glad to have been of some help! And to hear you're back up and running, of course; I hope it continues to work fine!