AArrrgh My puter died

[Urban Cowgirl]

Not sure if i will buy a new one or not. What are your opinions on whats good? TIA

[dog$]

My old puter died and I got it fixed. The Window must crashed or something, but it wasn't difficicult to fix. I Wouldn't throw it out unless it's over 3 or 4 years old.

If you're lookling for brand, I would shop for a Dell.

[Urban Cowgirl]

Well the problem seems to be that we used the restore disc and ever since then my monitor is not getting a signal and neither is my keyboard. I know its not my monitor because we even tried hooking it to hubby's monitor. Not sure what else to try. My hubby built his own puter and he is baffled at this problem and has tried everything he could think of. I thought about trying the restore disc again but we cannot see anything on the monitor so there is no way for us to know when to hit yes and continue and even if we did know when to do it there is no signal between my keyboard and puter anyway. Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks again.

[GAWildKat]

Ok I will attempt to make sense here on my lack of sleep.... what brand computer is it?
is the video port (where the monitor plugs in) onboard (built into motherboard) or a seperate card?
If you computer is a name brand computer you may be better off buying a new one. proprietary parts for computers are often more expensive than the computer is worth. Without being at your computer and playing with it myself I will say that it the ports where the monitor and keybord plug in have failed. It's not a common problem in ports but it happens. Unfortunately the ports themselves cannot be replaced, the whole board has to be replaced. Prebuilt computers are often better for the money because of the warranty but you can't service them yourself until the warranty expires, and alot of the componets are built to the motherboard. Custom built computers can be more expensive but are often the long term better value because of the upgrade capablities as technology changes. I am easily found on the IMs if you need more help, or pm me for my phone # if you need tech support. Hope I've helped a little.

[Urban Cowgirl]

oK I will try and explain a little better. First off its an emachines.....the video chip is built in and I also have a separate video card that I bought. The puter was working fine, hubby installed the video card back when I fisrt bought the puter in 2002......everything worked fine. Around december the puter starting acting really bogged down so hubby reformatted. At that time hubby installed the driverrs for the video card again, he disabled the built in video card (did all that stuff in the bios.....I don't know a lick about it). Well when he started the puter we could see all the bios on the moinitor but when windows started up my monitor went to sleep, like it was not gettingg a signal. So hubby disabled the video card I had bought and I just used the built in chip. Well I really noticed the difference, so after much bugging of DH he reformatted me again (day before yesterday) so he could see if he could get my video card to work. Through this whole process since december whenever we had the monitor plugged into the card I had bought we would start the computer and we could hear windows and everything but we could never see it. Well things really got screwed up and the puter froze all up and the cntrl alt del would not restart it and the power button would not restart it...nothing would restart it so he shut it off using the power strip ( that is the only way we could get it to restart). Ever since then we turn the puter back on and you cannot hear it load up or do anything its like that power light works and that is it. I am not sure if he fried the motherboard or the hard drive or what. Best Buy wants $50-$60 an hour to figure out what is wrong with it and then I will have to buy the parts, I am just not sure its worth it. My hubby is fairly computer literate, like I said he built his own, his is all custom and he does all his own upgrades. All I use my puter for is basically emailing and internet, I do a little printing ...coupons and such. I do however have a love for one game and its an old one. I love to play Halflife Team Fortress Classic..... as you amy know I do not need anything fancy to run this game.

Best Buy has a decent deal on an emachines right now so I am not sure if I should just get that with the extended warranty , or if i should try to get mine repaired. Hubby seems to think I should just get a new one. For about $460 I can get one that hS THE FOLLOWING SPECS:

iNTEL cELERON Processor 2.8GHz
512 mb ddr ram memory
80 gig harddrive
dvd and cd-rw drive

or they have an hp for about $800

Amd Athlon 3200+ processor
512 ddr ram
160 gig hard drive
dvd & rw drive

I DO NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT PUTERS BUT I THINK EITHER OF THESE WOULD FIT MY NEEDS. Thanks for any additional help.