What To Do When Your Computer Won’t Start

James Hunt provides some essential advice for getting your PC up and running again

When you use a computer, you learn to take things for granted. You might not know how your processor works, but you trust that it will, and that if it  doesn’t, something will notice before you do. You’ll get an error message or an alarm or some other warning that things aren’t working as they should be.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t extend to all areas of computing. One of the simplest things users take for granted is that when you press the power button, your system will come alive and boot into your operating system so you can start using it. But what if that stops happening? Where do you even start to fix things? If you’re not sure what the answers to those questions are, you should be by the end of this article.

Movavi Video Editor

Roland Waddilove sits in the director’s chair and creates his own movie with a budget editing package

The low price of this software puts it firmly in the home user hobbyist arena. It's not a professional tool for editing your next TV documentary or Hollywood blockbuster. But although it's cheap, it has a lot of useful features, and it's great for editing your holiday, wedding, birthday or other videos you may have taken on your mobile phone or digital camera.

Quiet PC Mono All-in-one

Striking looks and great hardware, all from a single monitor chassis

The all-in-one machines we’ve tested in the past have been ARM-based, Android-driven systems, which although good are a somewhat limited when compared to ‘proper’ PCs. Plus they’re really nothing more than giant, glorified tablets.

We were therefore looking forward to getting our hands on the latest Mono all-in-one unit from Quiet PC, a system that boasts proper PC innards without compromising on style or functionality.

Benq RL2755HM

Need more control over your gaming display? Look no further

The Benq RL2755HM has been engineered for gamers, to get the best possible resolution and refresh rates while offering one or two other subtle extras to help the gamer enjoy the experience more.

The full HD TN panel measures 27 inches and offers a 1ms response time, brightness levels of 300cd/m2 and viewing angles of 170º horizontal and 160º vertical. Connectivity comes in the form of two HDMI ports, DVI and VGA, as well as a headphone and line in ports for the pair of 2W speakers.

HP Envy 360x 15-u000na

HP aims to make other hybrid computer makers envious with its x360 systems

In the past few months, HP has launched a series of products all labelled ‘x360’, which feature a hinge that allows them to transform from laptop to tablet and a few modes in between.

The Envy x360 is one of the physically larger models of this product range, featuring a full 15.6” ten-point touch display. The review model came with a Core i5 4210u CPU, 1TB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. HP also offers variants with more modern Core i5 and also Core i7 processors if you need that power.

Withings Home

While he's away, Michael’s cat becomes a video star

The Withings Home is a smallish device designed to keep you advised as to what is happening in its immediate vicinity. With dimensions of 85 x 75mm, this cylindricalshaped device can connect to a home network and communicate updates to an Apple smartphone or tablet via a downloadable app. Currently, Android and webbased apps are under development to help widen the Home’s sphere of influence.

Ruark Audio R1 Mk3

Anthony checks out a DAB radio that refuses to be held back

Digital audio broadcasting presents something of a problem for radio manufacturers releasing products in the UK. No matter how good their products are, no matter what features they include, they’re still going to be hamstrung by the fact that we’re using an old version of DAB, which provides lower-quality audio than FM radio. Meanwhile, many other countries are using DAB+, which can potentially provide much better sound, thanks to its more efficient codec (aacPlus, instead of MP2).