Computer troubles.

March 11, 2004

OK, so here I am, minding my own business this morning when all of a sudden I start hearing a repeated “Whirrrrrrrr…kaCHUNK” sound coming from my computer. I knew from the location of the sound that it was one of my three hard drives, and since I was still using my computer without any errors or random foobles, I knew that it was one of my two archive drives. So I shut down my computer as quickly as I could, opened my case up, checked all the connections, made sure everything was secure (even though if a drive was failing that wouldn’t mean a thing), and powered it back up. No sound anymore, drive is being read just fine. OK, no problem, I thought. Unfortunately, the fan that’s mounted on my video card to cool it down has a tendency to whine and grind when I turn the computer on. Normally it’ll make a racket when I first turn it on and then calm down to be a little more silent, but though that this time I could mayeb see what was going on, since I had the case open already.

So I powered down the machine again, pulled out the card, and put a different fan on the card. When I put it back in, nothing. System powered on, no video. OK…so after a bit of troubleshooting I put the old fan back on. Still nothing. Tried the card in a different machine. OK, to make a long story short, where do you think I’m going with this story? Yeah, the card was dead. I tried everything I could think of, but I can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Crap. What really bugs me is that replacing the fan would have nothing to do with anything that would make the card fail, and that in all likelihood it’s something *I* did in the process. I’m normally very careful about computer parts, so I have no idea what it could be. *Sigh* So I had to buy a new video card. I was planning on doing that something this spring/summer anyway now that I have some money coming in, but I wasn’t going to do it for awhile yet since the one I have (had) was still working just fine. I didn’t buy the top-of-the-line model (or just below that model, actually) as I’d planned to so that it would last me another two years like the one I just pulled out did, but that’s still $150 spent that I wish I didn’t have to spend. So what I have now is a fast computer with a video card that’s about three and a half years old in it that I had in ANOTHER computer that’s now currently off.

My Mom asked me the other day why I have to have so many computers. THIS is why I have so many computers. Replacement parts.

At least I can use my desktop in about the same manner as with my old video card, but I just can’t play any games. Well…I might be able to play Star Wars Galaxies. I don’t know. I haven’t tried it yet. If I turn all the special details off and turn the graphic level waaaaaaay down, I might be able to run it well enough to do a couple of time-sensitive things this weekend. Speaking of this weekend, that means that I’m not going to drive down and see Heather this weekend. There’s a Salsa dance festival thing and a good harmonica player coming to towns near her, and she really wants to go to those since they’re one-time things. No problem, we’ll just have to do something next weekend, instead, hopefully.

So I just wanted to write a quick entry and bitch about my misfortune with my computer today. It’s pretty rare that I have computer troubles that involve hardware, but it usually means part replacement. At least this wasn’t something that put my computer out of commission.

Maybe I’ll go see if I can play my game, or whether I”ll have to do the few things I need to do at my sister’s apartment on her computer…. See you later, all.

I haven’t posted an end-picture in awhile. Heather got me this polo shirt in Puerto Rico. Cool, huh?