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Jul - Computers and Technology - The story of how Wii homebrew bricked… my computer?!* New poll - New thread - New reply
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Epsilon
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Posted on 08-08-08 04:29:14 AM Link | Quote
It appears that my CSS broke...
A long time ago, on a board far away, I was looking for a laptop, and I eventually settled for this one last August. Then in April I casually walked into a Wal-Mart Super Center near were I live (built just three months earlier, though I doubt it affected the limited Wii supply very much…), and, to my amazement, I found two Wiis just setting there; there wasn’t even a line. Although I said I thought the Wii had some internal memory, they didn’t think it did, and convinced me to buy an SD card, a 1GB SanDisk specially made for the Wii (It’s white and says “For Wii” on it.). I learned more about Wii homebrew and the Twilight Hack (which for some reason would not work on my new SD card no matter what I did; it just wouldn’t show up on the Data Management screens… so I tried it on the 2GB card I was using for my camera [before it messed up, anyway ], which is from the same company, but the color blue, and it worked ), and after beating Super Mario Galaxy (with Mario), Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and Brawl (adventure mode), I got bored, so I installed The Homebrew Channel. However, I quickly got bored of that, too, so I decided to see if there was an Action Replay for the Wii. After a long Google search, I found websites talking about it coming out in a few months that were a few years old, a website that claimed to have them in stock, and a forum discussion were people said the previous site was a scam. During this time, though, I did learn of something called WiiRD, which provides a cheat system like an Action Replay, but to use it you need a USB Gecko, which can only be ordered online and cost about $50. But as luck would have it, they were just about to release a stand-alone code handler called Ocarina, which lets you use codes with just an SD card and The Homebrew Channel.

I said all of that so the following would make a little more sense: the PC application that comes with Ocarina didn’t provide vary detailed instructions on how to use it, so I pretty much figured it out through trial and error. This means I was constantly moving the SD card (the white 1GB card) from my computer to my Wii and back again. One time the screen saver came on (the avast! screen saver) but I didn’t see the harm in plugging the card back in; I was actually kind of curious as to whether or not plugging in an SD card would close the screen saver. For some reason though, when I plugged the card back into my computer, the screen saver just froze…. I waited a while but nothing happened, so I decided to try pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL, but as soon as I hit CTRL the screen just went black, and then nothing would work, so I thought, “Maybe if I close the lid and put the computer in stand-by mode it would stop whatever it was trying to do, and when I open it again it would work.” I closed the lid and it went into stand-by mode, but when I opened it, it just showed a bunch of thin vertical lines that were different colors, with every other line being gray. I had problems with my graphics card before (with installing updated drivers), but never anything like this, so I decided to just shut the computer off and turn it back on. However, instead of showing the usual HP logo it just showed the lines again, and then it showed a bright white light that moved from the left side of the screen to the right side; if not immediately after the light, then a few minutes later, the screen would fade to dark gray, and that was pretty much all it would do, besides the hard drive light flashing. Not even the Recovery Disks worked (or maybe they did, but I couldn’t tell because nothing showed up on-screen), although the DVD drive’s light was flashing and the computer restarted several times (I don’t know if it’s suppose to do that ). (Ironically, after I finally figured out how to use the program it turned out there are two versions of Twilight Princess, so the codes I were wanting to use weren’t even compatible with my version of the game. )

Since I bought the computer August 18 it’s still under warranty, so I called technical support and the lady (whom had a heavy accent that was hard to understand) told me to do some things like push some function keys while it was booting, and remove the battery and hold the power button for 30 seconds (which I assume is suppose to reset the BIOS or something…?), neither of which did anything. Then she wanted me to take out the hard drive (I ended up ripping a piece of plastic that was on it; I don’t think that would hurt it though…. Also, I noticed that it said your warranty would be voided if you removed it, but you have to take it out to see that. ) and RAM (it bent so much when I was trying to push it back in I almost thought I would break that) and put them back in. When that didn’t work she said they would send me a box (that had the wrong name on it ), and then I would send the computer back to them. She said to remove the hard drives (although I never used the second one) and the battery, they would contact me if they needed the hard drive, they wouldn’t delete anything (if they had to reformat it or something) without informing me, and that they would back up/recover the data. When the box came, though, the instructions said to leave the hard drive in, to back everything up before you send it to them, and that they would not be responsible if there was any loss of data. Also, I was afraid they wouldn’t send another box for the hard drive (or more importantly, that they wouldn’t pay the shipping), so I just sent it with the hard drives.

I’m not sure how much I really know about computers, but based on what I think I know, I can come up with five possible explanations for what happed : the screen broke, the graphics card/driver is broken/corrupted, the BIOS is corrupt, Windows is corrupt, the hard drive broke. However, I can also disprove those theories: the light on the wireless switch is orange when it’s turned off and blue when it’s turned on, so if the screen was broke the light should still turn blue when Windows boots up, right?; same thing with the graphics card; if the BIOS was corrupted then I don’t think the computer would of shown those lines before it restarted, because that is only loaded when the computer first comes on, I thought… ; if it was Windows then wouldn’t I still see the HP screen?; and the BIOS isn’t supposed to be on the hard drive, right? My mom suggested that maybe it blew a fuse, but she was just kidding. I hope.

Anyway, what do you guys think could be wrong with it?

*I am aware the Wii homebrew on the SD card almost certainly had nothing to do with my laptop crashing.

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Posted on 08-08-08 04:38:32 AM Link | Quote
I'll trim out all the excess and strip the post down to its basics with some aded paragraphs to help readability.

Originally posted by UnsurpassedDarkness
I said all of that so the following would make a little more sense: the PC application that comes with Ocarina didn’t provide vary detailed instructions on how to use it, so I pretty much figured it out through trial and error. This means I was constantly moving the SD card (the white 1GB card) from my computer to my Wii and back again.

One time the screen saver came on (the avast! screen saver) but I didn’t see the harm in plugging the card back in; I was actually kind of curious as to whether or not plugging in an SD card would close the screen saver.

For some reason though, when I plugged the card back into my computer, the screen saver just froze…. I waited a while but nothing happened, so I decided to try pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL, but as soon as I hit CTRL the screen just went black, and then nothing would work, so I thought, “Maybe if I close the lid and put the computer in stand-by mode it would stop whatever it was trying to do, and when I open it again it would work.” I closed the lid and it went into stand-by mode, but when I opened it, it just showed a bunch of thin vertical lines that were different colors, with every other line being gray.

I had problems with my graphics card before (with installing updated drivers), but never anything like this, so I decided to just shut the computer off and turn it back on. However, instead of showing the usual HP logo it just showed the lines again, and then it showed a bright white light that moved from the left side of the screen to the right side; if not immediately after the light, then a few minutes later, the screen would fade to dark gray, and that was pretty much all it would do, besides the hard drive light flashing.


It seems like your graphics controller got fried. It's possible you damaged your screen when closing it or something else (especially if your keyboard was pushed with any amount of force), since I've had something similar happen.

Your best bet is finding another monitor (any VGA will do) and using that laptop's VGA output to try to see it on another screen. Usually there's a key (Fn + F##) that will swap the displays.

In any case, when rebooting the computer entirely failed, you should have stopped and not done anything; the BIOS uses the most basic video drivers, and if an error was occuring there, something hardware-wise got toasted. Inserting the recovery disks may have wiped the drive entirely.


Unfortunately, since you've already sent it in, there's nothing you can do except wait for the bill since HP will almost undoubtedly claim it as your fault. Sorry, but next time come to us first before being told to rip out components by outsourced tech support, even if only to see what we think.

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Epsilon
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Posted on 08-08-08 05:23:00 AM Link | Quote
It appears that my CSS broke...
It seems like your graphics controller got fried. It's possible you damaged your screen when closing it or something else (especially if your keyboard was pushed with any amount of force), since I've had something similar happen.
It looked similar to that…
Your best bet is finding another monitor (any VGA will do) and using that laptop's VGA output to try to see it on another screen. Usually there's a key (Fn + F##) that will swap the displays.
I forgot; I tried that, but nothing ever showed up…
In any case, when rebooting the computer entirely failed, you should have stopped and not done anything; the BIOS uses the most basic video drivers, and if an error was occuring there, something hardware-wise got toasted. Inserting the recovery disks may have wiped the drive entirely.
Oh.
Unfortunately, since you've already sent it in, there's nothing you can do except wait for the bill since HP will almost undoubtedly claim it as your fault. Sorry, but next time come to us first before being told to rip out components by outsourced tech support, even if only to see what we think.
I was actually going to, but my parents wanted me to call before the warranty expired… and it took me entirely too long to post that…

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Posted on 08-20-08 06:50:31 AM Link | Quote

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Yeeaaaah, when something like that happens you gotta try to fight with the display; no amount of 'restoring' can repair weird display errors.

If you're lucky, they'll replace the screen and your data will be safe. Unlucky... they won't do anything at all and charge you for your time. X_x

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Posted on 08-21-08 03:43:40 AM Link | Quote
It appears that my CSS broke...
They sent a checklist with the computer that said, "the following items were repaired/replaced: system board, heatsink fan;" what does that mean? But other than that it seems as if nothing ever happened to the computer.

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Posted on 08-21-08 04:06:46 AM Link | Quote
They replaced the part that makes it a computer instead of a doorstop, and a fan.

So now it's a computer, instead of a doorstop.

You're lucky they didn't send you a whole new machine and lose all of your data.

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Posted on 08-21-08 06:44:02 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by UnsurpassedDarkness
They sent a checklist with the computer that said, "the following items were repaired/replaced: system board, heatsink fan;" what does that mean? But other than that it seems as if nothing ever happened to the computer.

System board: basically the motherboard for a laptop, i.e. the thing that makes everything work
Heatsink fan: the fan on a heatsink that helps keep things from overheating

Good to hear they replaced it, though. Kind of surprising, too.

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Posted on 08-21-08 01:44:41 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Xkeeper
Good to hear they replaced it, though. Kind of surprising, too.

If they didn't, it'd probably remind me of those customer service horror stories on Consumerist.

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