Folks, on June 22nd I posted a blog entry about this product that I'd just bought.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161642. Well since then I have had an intermittent problem with the computer powering off randomly. I started running a tech support incident with ZooStorm to try and get to the bottom of it. They recommended running the "Memory Diagnostic Tool" in Extended mode to see if I had bad or failing memory. Each time I tried this the computer powered off after about 15% of the test. They then advised me to open up the unit and re-seat the memory DIMMs. I opened up the computer to do this and went ahead with the task. However I also noticed that the CPU cooling fan was not plugged in to the motherboard. Now this was surely not good. Had they simply forgotten to plug it in? Did it snag the first time the fan spun up and unplugged itself? or did I accidentally unplug it whilst re-seating the memory. I favour option 1. They forgot to plug it in. When I reviewed all of the evidence it certainly looked like a thermal shutdown problem. Anyway it's been a week since I plugged in the fan and I've not had a single problem since doing this. I had been getting 3 or 4 power off's every day before this so I'm sure it was always an overheating problem. If anyone else has strange power off problems open up your computer and check the power cable for the CPU fan. I really like this computer. It looks good and when working correctly performs really well. It's fast which considering it's running Vista is saying something. I have no real reason to upgrade to Windows 7 as apart from a few cosmetic improvements none of the other innovations seem to be of significant benefit to me (well not in my capacity as a home user anyway).
Nice Blog Post !
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