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CPU Pin troubles

Coritani

Critical Thinker
Coritani
Joined
Jan 1, 2007
Messages
317
I recently bought an AMD 3500+, along with a motherboard and a new video card. When I plugged it all in, the monitor said it had no video input. So, I tried another card, and another monitor. Neither worked.

So I took a look at the CPU and found that it has about 5 or 6 bent pins;3 in the corners and the others on the edges of the small 'gaps' in the pins. I must've accidently been a bit too forceful with the CPU. Is this repairable, or should I try to get a refund?

Edit: I bought it 2nd hand. The previous owner claimed it was almost brand new.
 
Have you tried to... bend back the pins? With some tweezers and a lot of care it should be doable, though there is no guarantee they will still make proper contact.
 
If you have installed the CPU yourself I doubt you are able to get a refund as you broke it yourself, if the pins are not broken but bent I'd try and bend them back. The cpu does not require any force other than gravity to fit in the socket so if there is any resistance you are doing something wrong.
When you install the fan you are also at risk of cracking the cpu if you position it wrong, if you crack it no warranty is valid either.
Installation of cpu and fan is done with the motherboard taken out of the case so you can see what you are doing, just place something soft under the board so you dont damage the board against the table.
 
You can bend the pins back straight, but you do need to be awfully careful on a number of fronts.

1) Obvious first: Make sure you are properly grounded while you fix it. Even a little static can kill CPUs easily.

2) Use a small pair of needle-nose pliers, preferably with a flat face.

3) Simply grasp the bent pin end-on with the pliers, and VERY SLOWLY bend it back into alignment. If you go fast, you risk snapping the pin off due to metal fatigue. After it is aligned, you can GENTLY use the pliers, still end-on, to straighten any kinks in the pin by just squeezing it.

4) Take your time and get all the pins straightened and lined up as exactly as you can. Check by sighting along the rows of pins from the side of the chip. Be gentle and take your time - try to get them as perfect as you can. There's not a lot of tolerance in CPU pin position these days, and you do not want a repeat bend of any pin.

Good luck!
 
I find getting a knife under the pin to just get it up a little at first, helps. (OK, so I've been dumb enough to bend a few pins in my time). Get it right the first time, as Zep said, metal fatigue is your enemy. Put the blade at the base of the pin, and bend it up as a whole.
 
Well, it's stuffed. Some of the pins are bent double over, rather than straight. The others are bent so much that I can't get my tweezers under them, and some of them are bent into other pins so unbending them will just bend other pins.

Good god I hate computers sometimes. Back to my old Socket A :(
 
Can still be fixed, just take your time and do it bit by bit.


Ha ha! "bit by bit"! A computer joke!

*SIGH* I'm a lonely guy sometimes...
 
Zep said:
Can still be fixed, just take your time and do it bit by bit.


Ha ha! "bit by bit"! A computer joke!

*SIGH* I'm a lonely guy sometimes...
Click to expand...

I don't share your optimism, but I may give it another shot in a little while. I've got nothing to lose, so why not.
 
I'm pretty angry at the moment. No, pissed off.

Because of my aforementioned CPU pin troubles, I bought a new CPU. It was a bit naughty of me, but I'll just sell some of my old stuff to make up for it. Anyway, I installed it all and it ran fine. I also put in a new hard drive.

The problem was, both of them were partitioned into 4 drives, and 8 drives was far more than I needed. So, I tried to merge two of the partitions in my old hard drive together(using Partition Magic 8). Both the partitions have nothing of value of them, so I start without backing anything up.

It goes up to about 90%. Then it gets an error, and 60GB OF STUFF DISAPPEARS INSTANTLY.

That 60GB of stuff is inclusive of, but not limited to:
  • Family photos and videos, alot of which I may not have backups for
  • Old stuff I had written, for school or otherwise
  • lots of stuff I had collected over the year or so I used the drive
  • Numerous backups, including serial keys for programs that I need and may not have backups for
  • my entire music collection (1000s of songs)
Hell, basically the only thing the bloody program didn't delete was my bookmarks for Firefox.

Bloody hell, I'm pissed off at the moment.
 
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Zep said:
It MAY be recoverable still, but I wouldn't bet on it...
Click to expand...

No, it's all gone. :(

I merged the unallocated space with the one drive leftover. When I looked, it was just empty space. Damn partition magic 8 to the depths!

I have another question. I'm on a LAN at the moment, so I have the Local Area connection status icon. When I click this, it shows stuff like how long the connection's been open, how many packets have been sent, etc. But I want to change it so that it shows Bytes sent and recieved, rather than packets. Does anyone know how to do this?
 
  • Easy--just remove the pencil carbon from your mechanical pencil and use the tip of the empty body to straighten those bent pins. Maybe not so easy.

I think what Zep was talking about concerning recovering your pics on your hard drive is that they weren't erased. They're still there but not in a format that you can read. The partitions were wiped out but the data is still there. You would need a specialized reader to recover the data. Most likely if you knew someone in law enforcement they could recover the data for free. Otherwise you might spend quite a bit of money having it done.

Gene
 
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AgingYoung said:
I think what Zep was talking about concerning recovering your pics on your hard drive is that they weren't erased. They're still there but not in a format that you can read. The partitions were wiped out but the data is still there. You would need a specialized reader to recover the data. Most likely if you knew someone in law enforcement they could recover the data for free. Otherwise you might spend quite a bit of money having it done.

Gene
Click to expand...

:jaw-dropp

Anyone know any software that can do this? I don't anyone in law enforcement, nor do I have much money on me at the moment.
 
Coritani,

You might look at this site... http://www.r-tt.com/

If someone had that software they might be able to use it on your network with your hard drives. I'm sure if you shipped them your hard drives they could recover some of the data. I think this is a viable market for some enterprising person.

Gene
 
YEE HAW

I tried a program called file scavenger. After a 40 minute search, it's found gigabytes of stuff. I'm not sure if it got it all, but I'm going to attempt to get back what I can. Thank you all for your help.

I'll update when it's done.

edit: spoke too soon. You need to pay to recover files in file scavenger. But at least I know they're there. I'm gonna try some other programs.
 
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Thanks to you all, I got most of the data back that I wanted. Thank you, very much. :)


For some reason, my computer seems slower than before, despite my upgrade from an Athlon XP 2600+ to an Athlon 64 3700+. Anyone have any idea why? Maybe it is because I have a new hard drive as master? Maybe because I don't have 64 bit windows? I don't know. Anyone got any ideas?

Edit: To elaborate, browsing with firefox is very slow now (including just doing stuff like typing [even typing this is laggy] and scrolling with the mouse) and general use of windows is slower. I haven't tried any games yet though. Not really happy with this 'upgrade'.
 
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Coritani said:
For some reason, my computer seems slower than before, despite my upgrade from an Athlon XP 2600+ to an Athlon 64 3700+. Anyone have any idea why? Maybe it is because I have a new hard drive as master? Maybe because I don't have 64 bit windows? I don't know. Anyone got any ideas?

Edit: To elaborate, browsing with firefox is very slow now (including just doing stuff like typing [even typing this is laggy] and scrolling with the mouse) and general use of windows is slower. I haven't tried any games yet though. Not really happy with this 'upgrade'.
Click to expand...
Video card settings? Like, not using hardware acceleration? Sounds like something like that. Maybe.

Windows XP?

Right-click the desktop, Properties, Settings tab, Advanced button, Troubleshoot tab.
 
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