PC Problems

Ravi is getting the message “A USB device has exceeded the power limits of its hub port.” This normally means that you have a USB device connected that is drawing more power than the hub can support. If all USB devices still work fine than you can safely ignore this message but if not you may need to get an external USB hub that has an external power supply so it’s not drawing power from the computer. You might also consider upgrading the Firmware/Drivers for your hub.

Sherrie replaced the internal DVD writer in her PC and now the computer is telling here it cannot find the hardware device. It may sound obvious, but you need to double check you have everything connected correctly. A new DVD drive requires at least both a Data ribbon cable connection and a power connection. They may also require an audio connection. If you’re sure its installed correctly then the computer should either auto install a driver or ask you to supply one on a disk so if you’ve no disk you might need to download a driver from the manufacturers website.

On rare occasions, DVD drives just aren’t compatible with certain computers. This may be remedied by a firmware or bios update for your motherboard, available from the motherboard makers site.

Rajiv upgraded Vista to Windows 7 and is now having issues with his Laptop’s sound card. Unfortunately, there are quite a few drivers unavailable for Windows 7 but the best thing is to check your laptop, motherboard or sound card manufacturers websites to see what drivers they have. If you have more than one sound card installed try to switch to the other one in the sound properties section. You can also use the device manager to automatically try to find any available drivers online.

Matt can’t get his laptop to start up, there’s just the sound of the fan and nothing else. If you are sure you can’t hear anything but the fan then perhaps your hard drive has died. There are normally light ont he front of a laptop to indicate activity in various hardware components one of which should be for the hard drive (they should have symbols on them). If this light is red or not on then perhaps that would be further proof of a failed hard drive.

It could also be a dodgy power supply or corrupted operating system or boot procedure so maybe try reinstalling your system.

Waheed’s mouse is moving by itself and when he tries to regain control he can’t! I’d say either the mouse’s ball is dirty or the optics if its a laser mouse are blocked/dirty. Make sure if you’re using a laser/optical mouse that you’re not using it on a highly reflective surface. If it’s a wireless mouse maybe your batteries are draining? Try update the mouse drivers too. See if you can get a lend of another mouse to test and make sure it’s not the pc. New mice are fairly inexpensive too though if it comes to that.