Is A Desktop Supposed To Have The Sound Of A Fan?

I had posted about this last night,. but got no replies.

I would just appreciate some advice.

As Ive posted before, I had a laptop that crashed last June, and could not be fixed.

I bought a certified pre owned desktop, that had been working fine, until the last couple of days.

It used to be that when the computer went to sleep, I would push the button gently, and it would easily turn on.

Now, it seems that I have to push it, and rev it up., almost like a car engine that will not turn over.

Also, I thought that before I would hear a sound like a fan when the computer was on, or trying to turn on, now I hear nothing.

Also, while the TMF seems to load okay., other pages on other sites have an error message, will not load, and will not allow me to post.

If anyone has any advice or ideas as to what could be causing this, it would be appreciated

Even though this computer is a certified pre owned, I got it less than eight months ago, so I hope something is not seriously wrong with it

Thanks

Well, worst case scenario is physical damage to the HDD. Although it seems unlikely because the problems you're describing would be difficult to explain fully by a damaged HDD. I suppose part of the boot file or windows directories were corrupted that might account for the operational difficulties.
My first thought would be to turn it off through Windows, and restart it as opposed to putting it to sleep or hibernation. A full restart can sometimes do wonders to solve a myriad of problems.
If the issues persist, try to identify what websites that experience problems share in common. See if that helps narrow down what it might be, a permissions issue?
If all else fails, you may have to reinstall the OS and start from scratch.

Let me know what you discover, I'm happy to offer what help I can going forward.

Thanks for the information, and the help, happy.

Last year when the tech installed this computer, he told me to do a full restart every day.

I do it, most days, but some days I forget. (Other things on my mind, as many of us do these days)

Luckily this morning I was able to get it on. It was only off four hours last night because I went to sleep very late.

I just woke up,. When I am less "out of it" I will do what you suggested and see what happens.

Thanks again for the advice.

Mitch

I had a problem that sounds similar on my computer, where the first couple of times I tried to start it, it would fail, then finally it would "catch" and fully boot up.

It turned out that I needed to replace the power cord and ac adapter block, because it wasn't generating enough power to get the hard drive spinning on the first try.

TMF Jeff said:

I had a problem that sounds similar on my computer, where the first couple of times I tried to start it, it would fail, then finally it would "catch" and fully boot up.

It turned out that I needed to replace the power cord and ac adapter block, because it wasn't generating enough power to get the hard drive spinning on the first try.

Click to expand...

I actually just had an issue with my ac adapter last year. One evening I was using my laptop, I got up and stepped on the cord and it came out of the outlet on the laptop abruptly. When I plugged it back in, it wasn't being recognized at all. The next day, the laptop would see that a adapter was plugged in, but it still wouldn't charge. Everytime I turned on my laptop, I got a notification that the adapter couldn't be recognized, that the battery wouldn't charge, and that the laptop may operate slower. The battery would drain, but very very slowly. Like when fully charged, after a week or two it would be down to 95%. So what I did was every other day/two days, I'd take 5 minutes and just take the cord out and immediately plug it back in. Because it would charge for maybe 10 seconds, and then I'd get a notification that the cord wasn't being recognized. So I had to do that until I got a new one at the end of last year.

I can say that the laptop definitely was slower, startups took longer, and sometimes the startup screen would completely glitch after an update. I'd have to reboot again, and when I got to my desktop home screen, it sometimes would say that the update failed. So I just paused updates and prayed that the laptop would last until I was able to get a new one. Luckily for me, it did last. And I noticed that sometimes a sound like a fan would start up after I logged in and got to the desktop home screen. It never lasted long, only about 5-10 seconds, but it did happen.

Thanks for all the information.

Jeff, to be honest with you, I dont remember if the thing you plug in into the floor/surge protector is the same one as my old laptop that died in June, or if he put a new one in.

Today it does not seem to be as bad. I ve taken short breaks offline, but have been online maybe more today than other days.

The key will be what happens when I go to sleep tonight. I dont sleep much, but even if the computer is not in use for say 5 or 6 hours as it often is overnight, that is usually when the problem happens.

Now that you're in a desktop the power supply would be roughly analogous to the adapter in a laptop. Think of the power supply as the component that takes in AC power and converts it into specific DC output voltages and sends that to the internal workings. It is possible your power supply could have an intermittent failure. It's also possible the internal connections between the 'power' button and the motherboard have loosened.
My recommendation, even if it's much more convenient to put your computer to sleep, or hibernate it even it's arguably safest to simply turn it off when not in use. It avoids any accumulation of OS errors and you don't have the physical disks periodically spinning up and down.
If it's working better for you now that's an encouraging sign. Provided the problems don't reappear it may have just been some errors cleared by restarting.
But, if you find more problems then look for any similarities between the sites or programs that give problems and that'll help troubleshooting further.

Thanks for the advice, happy.

The only problem with what you suggested is that sometimes I might be off it for 15-30 mins during the day, then be back on for hours.

I could turn it off when I go to sleep for the night, but sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, go online, then fall back to sleep.

I could try doing a restart every 18-24 hours . A tech I once saw recommended that.

Thanks again

Something else I was thinking, although I dont know if this would be related or a reason.

While it has not happened this week,. this building/my area frequently has internet outages ranging from minutes, to hours or even a day,

I'm wondering or thinking if maybe one of the recent outages caused something in the computer system to go down.

Everything was working fine from the time the tech installed this computer in June, until just a few days ago

I'm going to try to avoid having to see the tech unless absolutely necessary, as seeing him will set me back at least $100, money I dont want to spend unless the computer crashes or wont restart.

Thanks again for the advice. I'll have to keep watch on this closely.

The computer turned on fine this morning after about 6 hours.

Still no sound of a fan, but at least its working.

I watched a long movie online last night, and it played fine, no starts or stops.

Once again will just keep watch on it.