A thought shared don't always blame the Software

welchb · Post by **welchb** » Fri May 26, 2006 8:13 am

Hello All,

I thought I'd share this as I've always found these boards to be of so much help to me, I'd try and give back a little too, albeit this problem was quite obscure and probably will not affect many people --- this said there's a moral in the tail, (IMHO) which may help others.....

About 12months ago I bought a new PC from a local (small'ish) retailer and before I purchased this I visited a couple of stores and also one of the big retailers in the UK.

I explained to the people I wanted a high end PC as one of the things I wanted to do was video editing etc.... Eventually selecting the small local supplier --- here's part of the moral.

I got the machine and all's been running fine however when recently redering a hour of video (VS9 or VS10+), my machine literally shut down on me.

Not a "soft" shutdown literally like someone had turned the power off.

This problem went on for a few weeks and the only common factor was that it was when Video Studio was rendering --- I could not re-create the problem with any other software package.

I spoke to my local store who I purchsed from and they where very understanding, asked me to bring the PC in when convienent and I ran through the problem with them.

One full day later they had fixed the problem --- as it turned out it was the Power Supply Unit (PSU) -- that was starting to 'overheat' and had a thermal cut-out.

Now why did I bother to post this --- well for a few reasons ---

1) it was not the software that was at fault -- I think eveyone know's video ediiting is resourse intensive and sometimes a PC config has a bearing on this. Maybe something for people starting out should bear in mind and why often specs of PC's are requested when problems are posted.

2) I spoke with a local dealer before purchasing the PC and told them the sorts of things I wanted to use the machine for and consequently they helped with recommendenations of hardware etc....

3) The after sales service I received from these guys was excellent -- they actually replaced the PSU free of charge despite the machine being slightly out of warrenty and gave me 3months extra warrenty for my troubles.

Not only that they where so much more knowledgeable that the big stores staff....... I'm sure I would not have had that level of service from them.

Anyway, I'm not a very happy I continue to use the boards as I learn and I hope this post may help some too.

All the best,

Brian

welchb · Post by **welchb** » Fri May 26, 2006 8:16 am

Typo on the last line "Anyway, I'm not a very happy I continue "

should read --->

"Anyway, I'm now a very happy person I continue ........"

Post by **Ken Berry** » Fri May 26, 2006 9:36 am

Having gone through a very similar PSU problem a couple of years ago, I thoroughly sympathise!

And thanks for posting the message. As you have probably seen, from time we have people posting problems and sometimes we have to suggest they look at their hardware as being the culprit. Your own tale is salutary in this regard: software is not always to blame!!

welchb · Post by **welchb** » Fri May 26, 2006 1:53 pm

Totally agree Ken and in some strange twisted way (sorry -- don't really mean it) but am glad that I'm not totally alone in what the problem was.

As video editting software improves and I think from what I know VS10+ is very good, considering what you can do and the price, these types of software packages will make high demands from hardware and if people want to do editting it's worth a bit of leg work to get the right set-up and have a good retailer who also offers support.

All the best, hope our problems are well behind us.

Regards,

Brian

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Fri May 26, 2006 7:42 pm

Another adantage to small shops and "white-box" computers, is that you usually get the full operating system on CD. If you get a Dell or HP computer, the operating system is on a hard drive partition, and you get some sort of "recovery CD".

Typo on the last line "Anyway, I'm not a very happy I continue "

should read --->

"Anyway, I'm now a very happy person I continue ........"

HINT: If you click the EDIT tab, you can edit your post.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Fri May 26, 2006 7:50 pm

DVDDoug wrote:Another adantage to small shops and "white-box" computers, is that you usually get the full operating system on CD.

True, but I've also encountered numerous instances where a small local shop installs illegal versions of Windows XP in order to cut costs, and then the user is unable to get SP2 or any of the security updates after that.

There are post here at least once a week from someone who says he/she has XP but without SP2 -- gee, I wonder why that is.

Going back to the PSU problem, those are some of the most difficult problems to diagnose. The PSU gets taxed the most when transcoding, burning CDs/DVDs, and playing games, and I'm sure a significant number of problems attributed to a particular program are really just faulty or under-dimensioned PSUs.