i have had a dell dimension since 2001. I recently gave it to my lil sis and she has been using it for 7 months-unfortunately she spends her life on myspace and does her hair weave at the computer(hair is everywhere I never imagined it would cause this situation). It doesnt work now. I turn it on and the dell logo pops up and than a black screen with a blinking cursor and the fan starts to spin at high speed. I cant get into safe mode/cant boot from cd(ie knoppix)/cant get to the cmos. I opened it up and found hair all inside and removed some of it cause the spare can of air that i had was nearly empty. It still doesn't work. Your opinions?
2007-10-13 11:48:23 · 5 answers · asked by zoemayne 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
Lots of hair can potentially clog the processor cooler and bind the fans. But severe cases of such would just trigger processor throttling or auto shutdown, thus unlikely to fry the motherboard.
Since your PC is old, I suggest that after cleaning it of hair, replace the CMOS battery too. After powering ON, press Del or F2 to open BIOS menu. Adjust clock and calendar, load fail-safe defaults, save and exit. PC will restart.
2007-10-13 12:04:53 · answer #1 · answered by Karz 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The fact that you're seeing the Dell logo is a good sign and presents some evidence that the motherboard may still be ok. I've seen worse stuff than hair accumulate inside a motherboard over a longer period of time and the system has been ok.
Once you've cleaned up all of the debris from inside your system and especially inside the floppy drive, try going to http://support.dell.com, downloading the latest BIOS and flashing the system from your floppy. If it doesn't work the first time, try a couple different floppy disks. They can be tempermental. Flashing the BIOS could possibly "revive" your system so that the CMOS is once again accessible. If not, then yes, the motherboard could be fried. If the CMOS does become accessible, make sure that it sees your hard drive and the CD / DVD drive(s).
2007-10-13 12:09:25 · answer #2 · answered by vincejacobi 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, it's very possible.
I had a computer and during electrical storms it would shut down. I had to replace the motherboard 3 times because it literally "fried" it.
Now, I have a weird protector thing that prevents this from ever happening again. Motherboards are $75 each!
2007-10-13 11:57:40 · answer #3 · answered by Wendy D.V.M. 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes. While hair is not conductive enough to cause a charge to go in the wrong place and fry your MB like that it does however hold in heat and block out cool air from your fans which will cause the components to overheat and fry themselves.
2007-10-13 12:16:19 · answer #4 · answered by loa_ryu 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
yes it is possible... I fried a 6 month old laptop due to pet hair..
2007-10-13 12:03:36 · answer #5 · answered by apryl 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋