Hi everyone
I'm new here and have read over some of the posts and stickies but have not found my issue.
I have a Dell 4550, Pentium (R)4 CPU, 2.4 GHz and 2 GB RAM (extra added by me). I have never gotten any kind of warning or message that my tower fan was not working properly.
For the last couple of weeks, I have noticed my computer monitor brightening (a lot) and then darkening (screen is still readable), and then going back to normal. This will happen anywhere from 2 to 6 times in a two hour period.
I have been turning off the computer when not in use, giving it a chance to cool down, which I now realize was the worst thing to do.
Today, when I went to fire it up for about the third time, during the start-up, Windows shut down "to protect itself" and gave me a blue screen message to turn off the computer and restart. I did, and have not had that issue again today.
I have placed a large fan behind the tower and the problem seems to have stopped for now, which leads me to believe the problem is caused by overheating. The tower casing was cleaned inside around 3 months ago, but was very dusty. My questions:
Does this sound like a tower fan problem and how do I check that it is working properly?
Are there capacitors or something else I should be checking for heat damage and replacing?
I know I really just need a new computer, but that won't be happening for a while, so any help you could give me to keep this one sputtering along would be greatly appreciated. Thanks much!
I'm new here and have read over some of the posts and stickies but have not found my issue.
I have a Dell 4550, Pentium (R)4 CPU, 2.4 GHz and 2 GB RAM (extra added by me). I have never gotten any kind of warning or message that my tower fan was not working properly.
For the last couple of weeks, I have noticed my computer monitor brightening (a lot) and then darkening (screen is still readable), and then going back to normal. This will happen anywhere from 2 to 6 times in a two hour period.
I have been turning off the computer when not in use, giving it a chance to cool down, which I now realize was the worst thing to do.
Today, when I went to fire it up for about the third time, during the start-up, Windows shut down "to protect itself" and gave me a blue screen message to turn off the computer and restart. I did, and have not had that issue again today.
I have placed a large fan behind the tower and the problem seems to have stopped for now, which leads me to believe the problem is caused by overheating. The tower casing was cleaned inside around 3 months ago, but was very dusty. My questions:
Does this sound like a tower fan problem and how do I check that it is working properly?
Are there capacitors or something else I should be checking for heat damage and replacing?
I know I really just need a new computer, but that won't be happening for a while, so any help you could give me to keep this one sputtering along would be greatly appreciated. Thanks much!