Washing the computer

[pnodrog]

About 6 months ago several time my computer froze and then displayed the dreaded blue screen. The error given was that the graphics card was timing out and not responding to an interrupt. (or words to that effect) The graphics card had accumulated a fair bit of dust so I brushed the worst off and it worked reasonably happily (blue screen about twice) until two weeks ago. For about three or four days in a row it would blue screen within a few minutes of starting but on a restart (sometimes a couple) it would perform fine.

I decided I would have to buy a new graphics card and was on the point of ordering one that would have been not just a replacement but a nice upgrade as well. However I needed to use the computer urgently before I ordered the new card and it would just not get going so I decided to take the old card out and with distilled water carefully wash all the dust/dirt of the track side (underside but facing up collecting dust when installed) of the board. Once it was dry I reinserted it back into the computer crossed my fingers and switched it on.

It has been starting up and running faultlessly ever since. A very cheap cure. I had begun to fancy an upgraded graphics card but unfortunately I no longer have a good excuse.. Life can be tough...

[ST1]

I like the museum in your town very impresive history about the people who settled there.

[Marie Hass]

Peter????

Dear L.Paul,

LOLs, I love those kinds of fixes! Unexpected, cheap but with desired results.

Marie

[Shadowman]

Nice comeback.

[ST1]

Marie sorry for any confusion I may have caused. I noticed where L.Paul (prodrog) had as his location, a place that I stopped at during a trip to New Zealand.
The link below may help you to understand my original comment.

http://www.waipumuseum.com/html/migration.htm

[inkista]

Nice fix, but--you don't have a Rocketblower?!!! [or better yet, a DataVac].

[FootLoose]

A great example of Kiwi ingenuity. I probably would have just thumped the box a few times.

[Manfred M]

I find a quick blast from one of the compressed gas cleaners (I have a few cans of one called "Dust Off") does just fine.

Most common reason for your symptoms is inadequate cooling; so getting the dust bunnies off the fan usually does wonders. The distilled water trick should do any harm either, but on the other hand I suspect it could.

[tao2]

About 6 months ago several time my computer froze and then displayed the dreaded blue screen. The error given was that the graphics card was timing out and not responding to an interrupt. (or words to that effect) The graphics card had accumulated a fair bit of dust so I brushed the worst off and it worked reasonably happily (blue screen about twice) until two weeks ago. For about three or four days in a row it would blue screen within a few minutes of starting but on a restart (sometimes a couple) it would perform fine.

I decided I would have to buy a new graphics card and was on the point of ordering one that would have been not just a replacement but a nice upgrade as well. However I needed to use the computer urgently before I ordered the new card and it would just not get going so I decided to take the old card out and with distilled water carefully wash all the dust/dirt of the track side (underside but facing up collecting dust when installed) of the board. Once it was dry I reinserted it back into the computer crossed my fingers and switched it on.

It has been starting up and running faultlessly ever since. A very cheap cure. I had begun to fancy an upgraded graphics card but unfortunately I no longer have a good excuse.. Life can be tough...

Hi L.Paul,

Nice story; but ah have reservations that the distilled water had anything tae do with the now functioning graphics card. More likely that the uninstall/re-install removed the glitch. Cleaning always helps PCs - and laptops, in particular.

Yer problem is usually the result of a GPU exceeding its allocated graphics processing time. It's also a result of too many background programs running or drivers needing updates.

But hell aye - it's working ...

[IzzieK]

Great story...cheap fix...

[dennybeall]

Electronics that are not powered up can be washed and at times that's the only fix that will work. I spilled coffee with cream and sugar in a $500 ham radio. It was trashed and all controls were stuck up. Took it apart - washed in warm soapy water - dried it good and all was well. Still work fine.

[NorthernFocus]

You must not have been truly committed to a new video card else you would have washed it with sea water rather than distilled

[jcuknz]

Funny that this thread is running today as I heard a story about rejuvenating car batteries at the club today. Drain the acid out into a safe container and then wash out with water with a second suggestion of hot water ... turn battery upside down and empty out the gunge ... refill with the acid and battery is like new ... so many people[ like me] just dump old batteries

I have an old battery waiting to go to the tip on which I will try this ... one day when I get around to it

[IzzieK]

I will remember this one...I think we also throw out old batteries...and there is quite a pile of them at the corner of the garage...thanks for the tip.

[Nicks Pics]

Can be tough to have to save your money I'll try to remember that thrifty fix.

[pnodrog]

Thanks for all the comments. My battle now is that the most recent Windows 7 update has failed and mucked up the bootmgr so it will not start. Looking forward to a day of mucking around to get it all going. There is so much junk on it I am concidering reformating and reinstalling everything from scratch (a practice that some experts recommend doing every few years) to tidy up the registry etc. Luckily (good managment?) I have all important data and files on another drive. The bigest problem is to get permision from Adobe to reregister Photoshop CS6 without first having deregistering it.

[Dr Bob]

Just a word of caution on the car battery handling. Car batteries have very concentrated acid so handling them in terms of emptying and filling is dangerous without proper equipment including personal protection (safety glasses/face shield, rubber gloves, rubber clothing, etc). The cost of replacing a car battery is not worth serious injury. Just me 2 cents.

Dr Bob

[xpatUSA]

Just a word of caution on the car battery handling. Car batteries have very concentrated acid . . . Just me 2 cents.

Dr Bob

Good safety advice, indeed. But the pedant in me has to point out that battery acid is only about 30% concentrated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur..._sulfuric_acid

Concentrated sulfuric acid is 98% max.

[Glenn NK]

I think I mentioned this previously on another thread:

An electronics engineer made a comment a few years ago that electronics can only be safely washed with de-ionized water.

De-ionized water is what is used in the industry to clean circuit boards after manufacture.

He went on to point out that even distilled water is not recommended.

G

[ajohnw]

They generally use rather specialised liquids to clean circuit boards after manufacture. One that springs to mind is mixes like safewash 2000. The aim is to remove flux residues and water is unlikely to do that even though de ionised water is pretty aggressive stuff in an odd sort of way - it just doesn't like being that pure so will dissolve small amounts of all sorts of things rather rapidly. Distilled water on the other hand for some reason I have never understood is far more stable - it doesn't rapidly take up CO2 from the air for instance and go acidic. I believe low grade de ionised water is used as a final wash at times but calling that de ionised is a bit misleading.

Personally I wouldn't be too concerned depending on what was on the board in dunking in soapy water in the sink and then swilling it off under the tap. Might not be a good idea if it has a fan for instance as it would take a long time to dry out internally.

Distilled water sounds fine to me but I would be inclined to mix in say 30% IPA to help it wet out and evaporate. The A in IPA would help removed greasy deposits as well.

De Ionised water - a long time ago I wondered why industrial chemists didn't use it rather than preparing distilled or even triple distilled water - one showed me why. Anecdotally I have heard that a few have made their coffee with de ionise water and managed to get mercury poisoning from their fillings. Pass, no idea but it is odd stuff.

John
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