Cleaning equals disaster

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I’ve cleaned the dust out of my computers many times over the years without a problem. This episode turned out quite differently. When I turned it on, my monitor displayed only jibberish.

The first time, I got parallel vertical bands of various colors in patterns, plus some random video noice in the background. I shut it down and reopened the cast, checked for loose connections, and reassembled it. This time, the vertical bands were still there, but with different colors. Also my machine sounded unusually loud—as if all three fans were running at full speed simultaneously. I shut it down and went to another computer to ask you good people for some ideas.

My tools were canned air, a soft brush made for the purpose, and some light use of a vacuum cleaner. By the way, I checked the pins on the VGA connector—no bent pins or other damage.

Your thoughts?

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You may inadvertantly have created a static discharge between vacuume cleaner/air can/brush and your mother board….or graphics card… Did you earth your PC while working? (Earthing strap linked between the PC case and your wrist, for example?)

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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I figured someone would ask that question, and my answer—I regret to say—is no. I have a grounding strap, but my computer servicing kit is packed away somewhere and I could not find it. Well, go ahead and tell me the possible consequences of having created said short, if that is what happened? That is, can this PC be saved?

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Unlikely to be static electrickery unless you removed each component for cleaning. The power supply does a good job of keeping static discharge at bay.

I would check your video card has not gone to god. Do you have a spare?

cheers, Paul

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If you have a discrete video card installed and your motherboard has built in video capability, then remove the video card and see if the on board video will function correctly. If so, and you are able to boot into Windows as normal, then your video card is the only casualty.

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The video card is integrated with the motherboard. It’s an HP Media Center m7760n.

I did not disassemble anything for cleaning. I did unclip the fan from the CPU, but I did not disconnect its power cable.

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Unplug your computer for a time (long enough to have all capacitors discharge) then restart from a cold off.
You may want to look at purchasing a cheap but decent videocard if you have a PCI slot available for it.

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Thank you, Clint! I certainly hope your suggestion works.

I’m a little unsure about the slots inside my machine. I’ve attached a photo of that part of the computer. Can you or someone help me identify that empty slot. It’s the black slot that’s visible in the upper part of the photo. There are three other slots already in use. They’re all identical (white). One holds nothing but the telephone connection, which I’ve never used. Another is for the radio antenna. The third one has connectors for coaxial cable (Internet connection and television). I’ve no idea what that empty black one is for.

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That looks like a PCI Express x16 slot which may be good news as PCI Express graphics cards tend to be cheaper and more powerful than older style PCI & AGP cards.

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Note the make and model of your motherboard, then Google it. You should have no problems finding specs on it.
Then it would only be a simple matter to determine whether it’s PCI/PCIe, 4, 8, or 16X. You will have plenty of cards to choose from.

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Cleaning a computer can be a nightmare, but having said that I did find that after cleaning overheating was less of a problem. Many problems are unfortunately caused by connectors and not necessarily the hardware. In my computer I have 2 hard drives which one of them gave off a clicking sound, or the mouse froze. Normally I would like a lot of people think that the Hard Drive is on the way to the cemetery. No it wasn’t the problem was the two or more power connectors to the back of these IDE type drives.

What I did was examined each of the 4 female sockets that fit onto the male drive pins, gently with long nose type pliers I gave each of these female pins a little squeeze; this made for a tighter connection! Result the clicking stopped, and so did the mouse freeze up on the screen. If you decide to do this check that where the 4 wires that go into the back of these female connectors do not jut out of the back of the connector. If so you will see where it is soldered to the female plug.

The new power supplies are meant for Sata drives and when I bought mine I found that I could not obtain one meant for 4 IDE connections, it came with 2 Sata and 2 IDE. In order to use the power pack I’d bought I had no choice but to cut the wires and use a four pin electricians connector each having screws to retain the doubled up wires for 2 Hard Drives and 2 Burners: See attachments.

Regarding Screen card cleaning it might pay when removed to use an alcohol based window cleaner to clean the contacts and make sure you wipe thoroughly before replacing.

Moshe

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Also my machine sounded unusually loud—as if all three fans were running at full speed simultaneously. I shut it down and went to another computer to ask you good people for some ideas.

I see where you also said, “I did unclip the fan from the CPU”. Exactly what did you remove — did you remove the fan from the heatsink, or did you remove the heatsink/fan assembly from the CPU? It sounds as if the CPU is overheating, which only takes a few seconds if the CPU doesn’t properly contact the heatsink. It is possible that the thermal compound between the CPU and heatsink was disturbed, leaving an air gap, even a tiny one, that would effectively prevent the heatsink from drawing any heat from the CPU. Even if you only removed the fan from the heatsink, it’s still possible that you somehow broke the heatsink free.

Also, do you have another monitor you can use for testing (or another PC you can test your monitor on)? I have seen several instances of failed monitors leading computer owners to think something is wrong with the computer. In the last case, the monitor that failed was less than a year old. A failed monitor sounds unlikely, but it’s worth a quick check.

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I see where you also said, “I did unclip the fan from the CPU”. Exactly what did you remove — did you remove the fan from the heatsink, or did you remove the heatsink/fan assembly from the CPU? It sounds as if the CPU is overheating, which only takes a few seconds if the CPU doesn’t properly contact the heatsink. It is possible that the thermal compound between the CPU and heatsink was disturbed, leaving an air gap, even a tiny one, that would effectively prevent the heatsink from drawing any heat from the CPU. Even if you only removed the fan from the heatsink, it’s still possible that you somehow broke the heatsink free.

Also, do you have another monitor you can use for testing (or another PC you can test your monitor on)? I have seen several instances of failed monitors leading computer owners to think something is wrong with the computer. In the last case, the monitor that failed was less than a year old. A failed monitor sounds unlikely, but it’s worth a quick check.

The heatsink inadvertently coming loose from the processor when you removed the fan sound like the most plausible explanation here.
You’ll have to replace the thermal compound now. Make sure you clean the surface of the processor really well, especially if it has that goofy tape that some
manufacturers use. This time, dig out that wrist band and ground yourself to the chassie.

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You are in luck. The specs at:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00820224&dlc=en

say you have a free PCI Express x16 slot.
You can get drivers, manual etc at:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=3339302&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&cc=us

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Unlikely to be static electrickery unless you removed each component for cleaning. The power supply does a good job of keeping static discharge at bay[/i][/i].

Yes the power supply does a good job, but only if the power cord is plugged in

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Yes the power supply does a good job, but only if the power cord is plugged in

Makes no difference if the power cable is plugged in. Static is by definition electricity between one isolated thing and another. Having one earthed makes no difference, it’s still isolated from the other.

cheers, Paul

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I am a pc tech for over 20 years now and I am pretty sure I know what happened. The cpu heatsink only fits snugly one way because there are electrolytic capacitors on two sides of the cpu. The heatsink has two sides that have been recessed to avoid touching the capicitors. Remove the heatsink and use a new single edge razor blade to carefully scrape off the heatsink compound from both parts. Save the compound unless its dirty, on a small piece of glass, that is unless you have some fresh stuff. Now, with no compound on either part, look everything over carefully and figure out which direction it goes then mark it with a piece of tape or sharpie. If you have fresh compound, great, put about the size of a small pea on the cpu and spread round and round with your finger, not only to spread it, but to mix it too. If you have a pile of dried out silver/grey stuff that crumbles, you can add 2 drops of 91% alcohol to it and mix it back up with your finger. You don’t have much time before it evaporates, so be quick and scrape up your freshly wetted compound and put it on the cpu, spread around with finger, and put heatsink back on, plug cpu fan back in, then have fun getting the stuff off of your fingers. Also, make sure all the screws holding down the main board are snug. They are grounds and if loose, can cause some bad behavior. As long as you didn’t run it for more than a minute or two with the heatsink on wrong, everything should be fine. It is possible that you zapped something when you vacuumed it out, which is a giant no no. Only compressed air! Never a vacuum cleaner unless it is designed specifically for electronics and has a sheilded motor, grounded/shielded hose, and is made of static resistant materials. They are expensive and are a specialty item. Good luck. I hope you don’t need that new video card, but you might. Hey, wait a moment. This is a m7760n, very small space saving computer. These get very hot very fast and are delicate as far as the video goes. I bet you will need a graphics card. Sorry.

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Did you blow the dust off of the fan blades in the power supply using compressed air without blocking the fan from turning? If the fan blades turn the fan becomes a DC generator and the faster it turns the more voltage it will generate back into the power supply and motherboard. This also applies to the cpu cooling fan.

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Hello C.

You wrote : If the fan blades turn the fan becomes a DC generator

No spinning motor can be a DC generator, it is always an AC alternator, unless rectified. Did you ever run test to see if the circuitry in the PS is so wired that it would rectify this AC to DC ? Your thinking is prima, but I am a non believer unless proven otherwise. Fire away, my shield is up.

Edit : A generator produces clipped DC ! Methinks.

Have a great day in spite of me. Jean.

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A dc motor will put out dc if spun up, especially if it is not a stepper motor which puts out pulsed dc when spun up. An Alternator is an AC motor with rectifiers to convert it to dc. Alternators are more efficient because two sine waves are at work simultaneously, one above zero (volts), and one below zero(negative volts) and the rectifiers combine them then put out dc. Jean is right about unplugging fans before spinning them up, or holding them still while blowing out the dust. It could cause feedback into the fan speed controllers and destroy them.

About the m7760n, I went back in my memory and remembered that HP had a service alert about this problem and extended the warranty out to 24 months. I was a HP ASP for 6 years and remember this one. Check your receipt and hope. If it’s within a couple months of being out, call them and JUST GIVE THEM THE SYMPTOMS, beg, plead, and so on. They might honor it under warranty for you.

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Jean, “clipping” is when an AC signal, a sine wave, has flat tops or bottoms because the sine wave wants to continue to rise but can’t because the voltage has reached it’s limit. DC is a flat line above or below zero. When the DC current reaches maximim, the line will move towards zero, as in the voltage drops. Clipping only refers to the cutting off of the tops or bottoms of sine waves of AC. I hope I’ve cleared up some confusion. Your overall conclusion about spinning up fans while connected to the rest of the pc is dead-on. Best Wishes.

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Jean, I hope I’ve cleared up some confusion. Your overall conclusion about spinning up fans while connected to the rest of the pc is dead-on. Best Wishes.

No you have not. But this is streching the topic too far. Let us let it rest. BW to you too. Jean.

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Another good way of ground your computer case while working on the inside is to use a Grounding Cable which has only the ground wire in it.
This will remove all voltages on the motherboard which are present even when the computer is turned off.
These are great little guys, that you plug into your computer and plug the power cord into it.

You can get them from Cyberguys.com
Ziotek 1ft. Green Grounding Adapter Cable (Part # 131-0560) for $1.59.

Hope this helps.

Denny

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You cannot “fry” a computer by overspinning the fan. You might kill the fan itself, but not the computer. All computer fans contain a small internal servo circuit that switches current through the stator coils, creating a spinning magnetic field. Spinning the fan with compressed air will generate back EMF in the coils, however, the servo board has clamping circuits to keep things from going out of control. Even if you could pass these currents through the servo board, where would they go? Back into the power supply, that’s where. And the power supply has it’s own snubber and crowbar circuits to deal with these things.

No, spinning the fan will NOT kill a computer. Been there, done that.

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The picture of the motherboard you posted looks like a cap is blown.Hard to tell in the picture, but you might want to check them out espicailly the one above the pci-express slot right side. If you haven’t done so already.

Gary

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The display screen symptoms come from display memory and/or controller that never sees initialization. If it was just a dead video controller, the Power On Self Test would still run and generate a beep code. The fans running at full speed suggests the computer never makes it to POST. Fan speed is usually very early in the BIOS boot routines.

It could be a damaged CPU or chipset (possibly a static discharge), or it could be a bad connection. Compressed air is notorious for blowing dust into crevices where it doesn’t belong. It’s also capable of lifting chips out of sockets. Before you replace the motherboard, try reseating EVERYTHING. Ground yourself, or course. Pull all connections from the power supply, remove and reseat all expansion cards and memory sticks. Look for socketed ROMS and reseat those. Make sure the CPU is seated firmly and the heat sink is properly fitted. The CPU can run for several seconds without a heat sink (long enough to run a POST), but don’t push your luck.

If it still fails, start thinking about a replacement motherboard or replacement computer.

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Caesar3,
From everything I understand about cleaning the inside of your PC case the last thing in the world you want
to use is a Vacuum Cleaner, reason being they are notorious for putting out Strong Static Discharges while running!

So with that said it could be any number of problems that have been created if some chips were destroyed out the mobo…
If its an onboard graphics processor it more than likely is toast now, & if you fans are continually running at high speed chances
are you’re not making it to post as the bios is what controls your PWM speeds of the fans.

Never use a vacuum cleaner again of you are asking for it…
If this was me, I’d just order a new mobo & make it a hard lesson learned not and not to be repeated
as I build my own systems.

Btw, what I’ve used for years to clean the dust out of my cases is an electric yard blower with the small nozzle ~ No joke! LOL
I stand back about 5 feet from it using it at half speed and watch the dust & dirt go flying out!!!
No problems doing this for years & years now too…

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Funny that this thread is here today.
Last week I cranked up my two year old Win 7 Pro 64 bit machine, put in my password and went to get a drink. I heard a furious fan sound and returned just as it stopped and did not return. The next day I stayed around and it started after the password and continued until the last of the START UP items loaded. On the third day, I got the dancing lines/squares/colors you describe upon starting up.
I cracked open the box and looked around and ran some tests. I’ve been making my own ‘puters since the 1980s. I could confirmed fans were okay, drives were okay, CPU seemed to be working since I could make out the full boot sequence amongst the static. Cleaned it although it had little dust.
At a local repair point the techs checked here and there and swapped out the video card. Voila, it worked. They looked carefully at my card and discovered at 3 of four black topped caps had blown to the point they had actually burst through tops a bit. They replaced them and it is working. We are all interested in seeing if the fault repeats. The video card is a MSI GEFORCE 9500 GT. Both video outs are used to push dual monitors through a KVM switch. Other computer shows no signs of any failure. Both computers are behind separate UPSs and the ethernet cable runs through a switch for the house network. The cabled themwlves run through separate data filters on separate power strips. Although we get a lot of lightning in these parts, there has hardly been a dark cloud in the sky for the last 10 days or so.
Needless to say I am very interested in what might cause this behavior!

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AFAIK blown capacitors can render a motherboard or a video card unstable at least (when they don’t cause total failure). A thorough visual inspection on that aspect should be performed among other things.
Also, the processor is not the only part using a heat sink. One should check all heat sinks in terms of correct placement and thermal “grease” being properly applied.
I’ve had the “opportunity” to revive an old AGP 4x video card that suffered the same symptoms Cesar3 described by simply removing the (passive) heat sink from the GPU, cleaning both the GPU and the heat sink then applying a new layer of cheap thermal “grease”. No capacitor was showing signs of swelling (yes, some just swell a little on top – that’s a certain sign of failure for me) nor it was blown. After a careful cleaning of the AGP connector and a final visual check, I’ve inserted the card and give it a go. It worked flawlessly since then (it’s been more than 5 months now).
As Cesar3’s motherboard has video integrated, I can assume that (aside the processor’s heat sink being in some “unfair” state/position – which other posters have addressed) the order of checking should be: capacitors first, heat sinks second and power conectors third.
If the capacitors are swelled (even a little) at the top, they should be replaced (care must be taken to replace them with proper equivalents if not same values, i.e. the same capacitance and the same or greater maximum voltage). As replacing those involves de-soldering and re-soldering on a circuit board with more than 2 layers of copper, the operation should be performed by a trained person with the appropriate tools.
On the heat sinks, my approach would be to take them off, clean them (and the chips they cool off) and then “grease” them again prior to reassembly. Visual inspection can’t help much here…
Power connectors are often overlooked, but they don’t fail very often if there’s not much “activity” involving them. Nevertheless it’s worth checking, as a prior poster described.
Oh, to make the story even longer, as the video interface is integrated on the motherboard, a system memory check should be performed (“shared memory” should ring some bells).
That was my 2 cents thinking.

Later edit (reason: added recognition and edited picture):
Gary S Snyder has identified a certain capacitor as being suspect. After looking at the picture posted by Cesar3, I share his opinion.
Check that heat sink too…

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Wow! So much information! Thank you all for your contributions. Here’s a brief update on this patient.

After a couple of days puttering around, I gave up and took the wise advice Andy Griffith gave Aunt Bea: “Call the man!” That is, I took the lifeless machine to the hospital–a local computer technician. He has checked out the main hard drive–all good there. The processor seems to be OK, too. Next he tried to re-install the OS, and that process took much longer than he thought it should. Since the HDD and processor appear to be OK, he’s now looking at the memory banks. That was as of close of business Friday. He was closed Saturday and today, and tomorrow’s a Federal holiday, so I must wait till some time Tuesday for another update. I’ll share some of your thoughts with my technician. I especially want him to look at those capacitors, most especially the one you spotted in my photo.

To answer a question: I checked the monitor with another computer–the monitor’s healthy.

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I realise that we’re on the cusp of a solution, but there have been times when a scrambled BIOS can cause pre-POST problems. When this happened to me, clearing the BIOS either by using a mobo jumper or removing the battery for a “proper” amount of time, could reset it and allow it to recover.

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Again, my thanks to everyone who participated in this discussion. I’m sorry to report that I had to put my computer out of its misery. Seems the motherboard went bad. My technician spent several days working on it, but the patient died, despite his best efforts. I’m now the proud owner of a new MacBook Pro. It’s my first Mac, and so far I’m quite happy with it.

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