Trouble with my pc...

I advice you to take a backup of everything you have before doing anything else. Than, accordign to my experiences in the past, the next step is probably grabbing the fire-extinguisher. Beacause blowing through the ventilation wholes might make it only worse. Than calling your insurance-agent to lie and tell you were hit by a lightning struck and going to your local computer retailer who can give you an attestation that it "might have been" by a lightning struck that it broke. (That last step works when you have decent house-insurance in Belgium. Don't know about luxembourg.) Than by a new machine at that retailers and return the value of your old machine from the insurance.

Good luck anyway

You scare me!

I had exactly the same problem but with my laptop. And the lights when out too (les plombs ont peté)

and the problem was simply that the battery was too old (3 years) so I had to change it. It was almost burning. But here I can't figure where the problem is...sorry :-s

I suggest you make backups and then open up your case asap. It might have been a component that has overheated, and thus have burnt. Hence the akward smell. It could have been simply a wire, which is not so bad. If it's one of your hardware components, you might have a slight problem :) It shouldn't be your motherboard, because if that burns, nothing works anymore at all.

Question: after the "incident", did your pc run normally after you rebooted it? And did you get any Blue Screens of Death by any chance?

No... everything was fine... except that I had to restore active desktop.

Anotherthing I noticed is that even if the systems Bug... the HD still makes some tickling noise and I still can open CD and DVD trays. After a while (about a minute) the screen shuts down saying that there's no signal anymore.

backups! now!

yaka had the same problem last month and eventually, his pc blew up! better to back up everything, have your pc checked out by professionals and if needed, have a stonger cooler instaled.

(yaka didn't do any of these things and now he's f*cked bigtime ;) )

well if you're smelling burnt stuff i wouldn't advise turning it back on to back up at all. i'd unplug the power cord, open up the case and find what was burning before anything else...

Originally posted by : dtr

well if you're smelling burnt stuff i wouldn't advise turning it back on to back up at all. i'd unplug the power cord, open up the case and find what was burning before anything else...

Yah. Inspect the inside and find out what made the smell. Could be something simple. If it's not too heavily damaged you can then backup anyway.

I suggest u open it and check if every ventilator is still turning...Check also the vent on your graphic card...It seems like it gets stuck after a while..Perhaps because it's heating up...And stuff that reaches critical temperatures are not liked by the pc...It tends to get stuck or shut down... Also check all cables, if they're still connected properly... U must certainly check wether your CPU vent is still turning & also your Graphic card....

HD makes a tickling noise? Like tick tick...And it takes time to boot or that makes you wait? Could be some bad clusters on your HD...That can be dangerous, it are the first signs of old age for a HD.

Anyone heard anything about three marks of laptops, of wich the batteries tend to take fire? I've heard that recently from someone.... Anybody know which brands that are?

Backup and now!!! If it smelled burnt, I'd didn't start it up at all. I'd put my hdd in another pc to make sure, copy and backup the files there and burry it in a deep hole after spitting on it for letting you down so drastically! :(