so i was at a friends house for a little LAN party, and i was leaving at sat my computer down onto of a small plastic bin, which fell over, causing my computer to eat it. so i say **** it, i figured it would be dead so i brought it home, hookedi t up and turned it on.

To my suprise, it started, but once into windows it said "Windows has recovered from a serious error".

Anyone else had a computer fall on them? what can I expect? is there long run damage that i won't notice until over time, because as of right now it runs the same as it always has. I figured if there was any damage, it would rear it's ugly head when i turned it on, but since it works fine, anything I should expect? like a failed HDD or something/

"Windows has recovered from a serious error"...that happens all the time when im overclocking. Shouldnt be tooo worried. But the harddrive "could" fail at some point, getting banged around like that cant be good. But there is a chance that nothing bad at all happend.

Unless "Windows has recovered from a serious error" was caused by file read problems, a sign that the harddrive is going south.

my friend accidently droped mine down 2 flights of stairs..... accidently i just think hes jealous....... but its still kickin it

Ive had mine tip over in the car while transporting it but thankfully nothing serious

This may sound silly but..

.. I always buckle mine up when transporting it in my truck. I can slam on brakes and drift sideways down a dirt road if need be.

Just check to make sure all the HD plugs are seated tight into the drives and mobo, as well as the mem sticks, video card and all the PSU plugs........

its probably a good idea to backup your data if your computer took a fall, especially if it was on. I dropped my laptop once and the hard drive was only able to work for about a week before severe corruption and data loss occured.

I used to get that error when I restarted my computer after getting a blue screen of death. That was when I had a bad memory stick.

If the computer's still running you probably didn't break any pcb (motherboard agp/pci card circuit boards). The only thing you'd have to worry about are mechanical parts. Definately check the hard drive, consider backing it up and replacing it. Also you can run the hitachi drive fitness test (works on any brand of hard drive) to see if the disk is still fully functional. The test is a self booting floppy and it's pretty easy to use. I can be found, with other hard drive utilities here. You may also want to check that all the fans are running well, including the motherboard north bridge (if you have one) and the one on your GPU.

Quote: Originally Posted by turbopsi This may sound silly but.. .. I always buckle mine up when transporting it in my truck. I can slam on brakes and drift sideways down a dirt road if need be.

I do the same. I never set my rig on unstable surfaces either. I love it too much.

Ever heard of a computer burn-in test? Typically that procedure takes anywhere between 24 to 168 hours to run.

Chances are if your computer survives that it would be fine within the remainder of the product life cycle.

What are the specs of the system? If you don't have a Hitachi/IBM hard drive - critical hard drive failure is more than likely to happen at some point in time. How high was the plastic bin? Did it fall over or did it keel over?

Did it fall flat? on a corner?

There are programs available for CPU burn in and memtest. Hitachi drive fitness also have an exerciser so if you want to run that continuously for several days.

Check all mounts and fasteners.

(sorry but...lol at the falling computer.) I usually set it on the floor in the back seat of my car and it's sandwiched in there. I have strapped in monitors though with the glass facing no visible (of course). I've dropped hard drives before, onto carpet. They were two 18 GB 7,200 rpm 1/2H UW SCSI hard drives, Seagate. Came off the Ultra 60 and they were just sitting there. No big deal. No big loss even if they failed. (Still have to run the verification checks on them, but it should be okay. Not that I really care.)

Check all connections and fittings, make sure that they're not loose. Check all cables and power connectors. Check your HSF to make sure your CPU isn't cracked.

I always buckle mine in too, don't feel too silly.
I ran some stress tests on my HDDs and they both survived the tests. The box was about a 9 inches tall, and the box keeled over and the computer went with it. it landed flat and it still works. if it fails, i will be pissed since i just lost my job, and have 0 extra cash.

Quote: Originally Posted by DeadOnShot I always buckle mine in too, don't feel too silly. I ran some stress tests on my HDDs and they both survived the tests. The box was about a 9 inches tall, and the box keeled over and the computer went with it. it landed flat and it still works. if it fails, i will be pissed since i just lost my job, and have 0 extra cash.

depending on how frequently the data changes on your drive, it is still highly recommended to make a back up copy of it. There are programs that can help you do that, but it will probably still take a good couple of hours. If you want to make a smaller set of backups, you can do so with DVDs. Just make sure that whatever you're using, that you would be able to read the disk, assuming that your DVD drive is going to fail. (i.e. IF it does fail, what do you have that would be able to read your data disks?)

If it doesn't change too often, then the you don't have to update the backup as frequently. If it changes a lot, then moving over to a RAID1 or RAID5 would probably work to your advantage. That way, should any one drive fail; you would only have to replace that one to rebuld the data. And hope that your drives would fail one at a time even with RAID5; IF it fails.

If you don't have much in the way of "valuable" data (whatever it is that you deem valuable), then you don't have to worry about that. (other than being financially prepared for it). If you still don't have a job by the time it fails, make a contingency plan. I am sure that you should be able to access job sites through the public library in Tulsa.

Hopefully, that helps. If you get a chance, run the CPU and mem burn in tests as well. If it starts coming back with issues, then you can start looking at individual components for leaky caps, electrical shorts, bent pins, etc...

If you start having "random" crashes that you've never experienced before (yea yea...I know..Windows = random crashes) try and see if you can do a bit on the crash that you experienced. There's obviously a certain "set" of crashes that occur more frequently than others. So, if you get rarities; that's when you can start suspecting component failures.

My brother put his pc in his trunk one winter when he was headed for college, he hit an icy patch in the road and spun out of control. Meanwhile the computer crashed around in the trunk. When he finally did open the trunk, the side cover had come off, his video and sound cards had come out of their sockets and were lying randomly around the trunk. The case was cracked in two spots also. After reconnecting everything it worked just fine.

I dropped my pc once. it did the same thing. I checked inside and some hd connections were loose. Put them back tight and now I'm good to go!