NullSmurf
Das Bruce
My personal machine died.
I was actually reading CP when all my windows began closing. Not like they do when you "Start>Shut down" but like when you just hit the power switch. Aw, shit....
Try to power up again, all I get is 3 seconds of high speed fan, then shutdown. Its a power supply, I figure. One of the voltages is crow-barring and the CPU orders a shutdown. I head for the parts joint, grab a power supply - 450W on sale for $15. Schweet! It didn't change the symptom. Shit...
I was in the business for 10+ years and I've built and repaired thousands of boxes. Count friends and relatives, MANY thousands. It would take me 20 minutes to fix YOUR computer...hours or even days to fix my own. Anyhow, its the motherboard, I figure, so I head back to the parts house and grab a motherboard and RAM. Mine is 3 years old and my current RAM is too slow for the new board. Oh well. I get home, the board is too big for the case. SHIT! I head back to the parts store.
I get the everything remounted in the new case - nice shiny black thing, kind a cool looking. Fire em up, everything looks cool, but I disable multithreading (shut off the duo part of my duo core CPU), been there, done that. Even though I was careful to get the right Intel chipset so the OS wouldn't be overly traumatized, can't get the thing to boot, even in safe mode. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT! I head for the parts store to get another HDD because I don't want to nuke the current one.
I get it mounted, pop out the XP Pro disk and get cooking. Everything went well. All the drivers from the disk supplied with the motherboard actually worked. I had the disk for the video card, so that was cool too. It took over 3 hours to get all the MS updates and patches installed. Another full day to get all my applications (and GAMES) reinstalled. So....
Cost in time to get back on my groove - 6 days. Cost in dollars - $400. Not feeling guilty for just forking it over on factory boxes for my last 3 PCs - PRICELESS!
I was actually reading CP when all my windows began closing. Not like they do when you "Start>Shut down" but like when you just hit the power switch. Aw, shit....
Try to power up again, all I get is 3 seconds of high speed fan, then shutdown. Its a power supply, I figure. One of the voltages is crow-barring and the CPU orders a shutdown. I head for the parts joint, grab a power supply - 450W on sale for $15. Schweet! It didn't change the symptom. Shit...
I was in the business for 10+ years and I've built and repaired thousands of boxes. Count friends and relatives, MANY thousands. It would take me 20 minutes to fix YOUR computer...hours or even days to fix my own. Anyhow, its the motherboard, I figure, so I head back to the parts house and grab a motherboard and RAM. Mine is 3 years old and my current RAM is too slow for the new board. Oh well. I get home, the board is too big for the case. SHIT! I head back to the parts store.
I get the everything remounted in the new case - nice shiny black thing, kind a cool looking. Fire em up, everything looks cool, but I disable multithreading (shut off the duo part of my duo core CPU), been there, done that. Even though I was careful to get the right Intel chipset so the OS wouldn't be overly traumatized, can't get the thing to boot, even in safe mode. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT! I head for the parts store to get another HDD because I don't want to nuke the current one.
I get it mounted, pop out the XP Pro disk and get cooking. Everything went well. All the drivers from the disk supplied with the motherboard actually worked. I had the disk for the video card, so that was cool too. It took over 3 hours to get all the MS updates and patches installed. Another full day to get all my applications (and GAMES) reinstalled. So....
Cost in time to get back on my groove - 6 days. Cost in dollars - $400. Not feeling guilty for just forking it over on factory boxes for my last 3 PCs - PRICELESS!
