The fall and rise of my computer system.

26/09/2008 by admin.

Hello,

How have you been this week? I’ve had a really crappy week (I warn you now, it may end up been a really big rant).

You may remember me telling you about my old pc that’s basically act as a kind of mini file server, well this has cost me the whole week trying to get the piece of chunk to work, it’s a long story so if you are sitting comfortably I’ll begin.

As you know my little file server / Internet box died on me at the start of last week. The complete machine just died. I’ve had it a while so I thought it was time for an upgrade and I didn’t want to be without a machine for too long not knowing for sure which part of the machine is faulty (it could of been everything that had blown).

So with that in mind I ordered a cheap little pre-build gaming rig that I could just swap over my old hard disks into the new case and I would be up and running again (my day job is with computers / networks, so having to mess around with them on a night time isn’t my idea of fun). So the new box arrived and I waited till the weekend to swap over the hard drives. The first problem I came across was that the machine only has one IDE connector and the old box has three hard drives, so that meant I had to get another SATA drive for the new box so I could transfer the data across (a bit more expense, but okay), so that knocked me back another couple of days.

So the new hard drive arrives and it takes almost 3 hours to format and I transfer the first IDE hard drive across, which took a while, but did it. I then removed the now empty IDE drive and replaced it with the other IDE drive and turned the PC on. XP came up and said it found some new hardware and needed to reboot, which I agreed to and everything looked fine until halfway through rebooting the new machine just dies, the exact same way as the old box. So after 5 minutes of constant swearing at the box I decide to go out and buy a new case / PSU for it the next day. I paid a decent price for it as well as I waited a half decent PSU. Stuck the new motherboard and CPU into the new case and pressed the power button and… Nothing, nowt, zilch!!

I double check all the connections, the power cable, fuse, you name it, I checked it. So the old IDE hard drive I stuck in not only killed the PSU, but it’s also killed the mother board and / or the CPU. At this point, I’m getting so close to throwing the box at the wall. Out of pure frustration I take the old IDE hard drive out in to the back yard and hammer it in half with a five pound hammer just to make sure I don’t kill anymore PC’s with this and I’ve got to say that IDE drives are really well build as it took me almost 10 minutes of constant hammering to smash it totally in half.

So, start of a new day, I’ve calmed down again and I go out to buy a cheap motherboard and CPU as my bank account / visa card has really taken a beating over the last couple of months. I come back home and stick the new motherboard and CPU into the new case (so now everything is brand new (the evil IDE drive has never been anywhere near this new kit)) and… NOTHING!!

So by this time I’m shouting at the top of my voice, cursing and swearing (I’ve got a really bad temper when it comes to computers; people, I always stay calm with, but inanimate objects, that’s different) because this must mean that the actual new expensive case is faulty and I’ve bought a new motherboard and CPU for nothing. So to double check this, I clear a space on the desk and open up my main PC and use the PSU from that on the first new motherboard and CPU and it powers up using the onboard video card, it doesn’t seem to want to start up with the video card in, but I can work around that, I just want to get the machine back up and running so I can get back to work and get the room tidy again so I can at least start to work again (see photo, it got a lot more messy then this and I had stuff in the hall way landing as well (the red Mr Shine bottle ended up been thrown against the wall (by accident) and smashed into loads of pieces and the room stunk of polish for the next two day, which cleared my cold for a bit, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a cold treatment)).

  Just to add to the run of bad luck, it’s my first wedding anniversary on the 29^th of September (my (beautiful) wife lives in Canada, while I’m in the UK (waiting for visa’s to be sorted out)) so I wanted to make sure my wife got her present in plenty of time, but it came back to me last weekend all the way from Canada because I didn’t write my wife’s name on the parcel (just her address), so it’s 50/50 now on if my wife will get her present and card in time.

Project wise, things are quite this week I’m afraid, not stopped, but quite. Things will pick up next week I promise. So fingers crossed, I should have everything back up and running again. I just hope I’ve not lost anything really important that can’t be replaced.

Let’s hope things settle down a bit now so I can start to work again.

*Update*: It ended up been a faulty power switch on the case stopping it from working and the video card is dead, but that will wait till payday as I’m not spending any more money, so I can now start to work again on the projects, first thing in the morning when I’ve cleared up enough working space to actually be able to work.

Take care,

Mike

www.badbumble.com

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