What started with some skips and freezes eventually cascaded into blue screens of death. I'm no slouch when it comes to computers (having worked in IT for several years), and while I managed to stem the flow of blood from the motherboard by doing a clean installation of Windows 7, I've been having a hard time with the card readers.
I keep all my writing on an 8 gig SDHC card. This allows me to transfer it back and forth from my desktop computer to my laptop (a tiny little Acer Aspire netbook) instantly.
When the tea spilled, several events happened in a rapid sequence. I yanked out the external hard drive, ran to the kitchen for paper towels, and tried to keep the mess from getting into the inner workings of the computer case. The latter effort succeeded, but the act of tearing out the USB external caused me to actually pull out the little black plastic stub that is enclosed in the USB port itself. This means that port is now completely dead and has a tendency to short out the rest of the ports on the front of the PC.
I believe I've got everything working, and under control again. I hope so. The netbook is unable to handle anything that requires more memory than Open Office or Google Chrome!
The time has perhaps come for me to replace the desktop. I will probably build my own to save money, but it's a pity - this computer is only two and a half years old.
Nothing lasts forever.
The thought occurs that if the box was 30 months old and used for non-work purposes as well, it was probably getting due for an upgrade anyway? And I very much second the idea of building your own. Or at least getting a cheap base and expanding from there.
ReplyDeleteYes, the current box was a cheap base that had been rebuilt - I started with a $350 refurbished HP Pavilion, dropped in a 650 watt power supply, a GeForce 9600, 2 more gigs of RAM, and an extra case fan. I could actually upgrade it to 8 gigs of RAM since it's running a 64-bit OS, but I'm not sure it's worth it if the USB and card readers are on the fritz.
ReplyDelete