Oh s**t

[BloodOmen]

So my new soundcard and headset arrived today (ASUS Xonar Xense / Sennheiser PC 350) so I decided to give my pc a good clean with compressed air before I put it in, upon cleaning my pc I plugged my soundcard in and put it all back together (as you do) when I turned it on I got a bluescreen of death and I promptly shit my pants! I quickly turned it off and tried again, this time it booted up fine but spazzed out when I logged into windows, no bluescreen this time but keyboard/mouse was virtually none responsive and the computer itself was choking more than a fat bloke running up a hill.

Wondering could the compressed air have fucked my pc? or can someone vouch that it is completely harmless? I made sure I used short bursts and kept it quite far away from stuff when using it to avoid freezing.

 

[Raven]

You haven't knocked anything while doing it have you? Check everything is seated nicely first.

Then check your drivers and whatnot, I installed a sound card a few years back which caused random crashes in games, the latest drivers at the time were at fault.

 

[old.Osy]

You've nudged some component out of place or otherwise un-seated one. Maybe the dust blowing did that, or maybe it happened just by moving the case around.

1. Shut it down completely (turn off the PSU, or remove the power cord)
2. Produce some izopropilic alcohol (or high grade medicinal)
3. Carefully remove RAM sticks, video card, any other PCI cards and wipe the connectors with alcohol.
4. Blow air in the slots thoroughly before re-seating the components.
5. Profit.

 

[BloodOmen]

seems ok now, onboard was still enabled causing it to spaz out now i'm trying to work out how to stop this damn crackling when people talk on vent ;S

 

[Bahumat]

Check ventrilo is using your sound card in the options? Dunno if that might help

 

[BloodOmen]

already done that still getting crackling and feedback when people speak, can't find a noise cancellation button either with this card/headset which is odd.

 

[Access Denied]

Why did you buy a separate soundcard anwyay? Unless the onboard one is fucked or it's a REALLY old board you shouldn't need it. Unless you do a lot of high grade sound work of course.

 

[Litmus]

Because the difference in sound quality between on board and dedicated is huge

 

[old.Osy]

To me, anything sounds good, even grandpa's mono radio. Must be my ear is fucked and can't tell frequencies very good. Not that i don't hear, i hear ok, but it's not sensitive, if you willl. Never saw the point in investing in a dedicated sound card, onboard will do for everything i do.

 

[Access Denied]

Because the difference in sound quality between on board and dedicated is huge

Not in my experience, at least not with HD sound on the latest boards. IMO any difference in sound quality is due to the speakers being used.

 

[KevinUK]

I keep reading that on board is all you need. I bought a Xonar DX and I hear so much more in games than before and I always get top end motherboards so it wasn't due to being a cheap on board chip.

I then bought headphones and it sounds even better.

I tried Sennheiser PC 360 but preferred steelseries 7H.

Case closed

 

[dysfunction]

I also bought one of those sound cards the sound is far superior to on board sound.