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It's Dead, Jim
Jun. 22nd, 2008 06:25 pmHerself's PC is h'ors de combat. I described the late evening storm last week where we lost power, and the next day during the day another strong storm came along. More power loss. After that storm, Herself tried booting up her PC, and called me at work to tell me 'The monitor screen is all blank. Fix It.'
This weekend she went off to a local SCA event, and my game plan was to fix it. Failing that to at least diagnose the problem as thoroughly as possible. Then yesterday and today, both, more big electrical storms. Yesterdays did not bring as much rain as todays did. Lots of rain today. That's another part of the story.
I did my diagnosing after that storm. Monitor works, confirmed by plugging the monitor into another PC. So I opened the box to see if the video card can be replaced. Good news, this PC is a couple years old so I didn't void the warranty by cracking the seal on the back of the PC. Bad news, the video card is built into the motherboard. So I decided to check the hard drive as the next possible source of the problem.
Good news, pulling her hard drive and putting it into an external housing I can find everything on the drive. No data lost. In fact, the drive may even boot. Not sure, but it may. Bad news, putting another hard drive into her PC, one I know is a boot drive with W2K loaded on it, and her PC won't boot.
So at this point I'm open to feedback, but thinking the mother board took a hit in the power surges from the storms. Yes, it's on a surge protector and that is through a UPS backup/surge protector. Could still be what happened. Or something else. Dunno. I do see lights on the mother board with the box opened, just No Joy on power up.
As for the rain today; in about 2 hours or a bit less we received 10 cm/ 4 inches of rain. At one point it was so thick I couldn't see much past Houdini's doghouse, and that was moved within 30 feet of the Big House to get him away from his old sand-pit and fleas. Our pet sinkhole out in the 'parking lot' turn-around area ... had been brim full of water based on the markings on the walls of the hole. Brim Full. It's drained now, slowly (which is also good news, as opposed to a whoosh drain and larger hole...).
I'm so proud of Houdini. Last summer he'd of been in panic mode with a storm like this one. This time, he went into his doghouse and hunkered down. Maybe that old sock with some other items holding my scent really is helping.
This weekend she went off to a local SCA event, and my game plan was to fix it. Failing that to at least diagnose the problem as thoroughly as possible. Then yesterday and today, both, more big electrical storms. Yesterdays did not bring as much rain as todays did. Lots of rain today. That's another part of the story.
I did my diagnosing after that storm. Monitor works, confirmed by plugging the monitor into another PC. So I opened the box to see if the video card can be replaced. Good news, this PC is a couple years old so I didn't void the warranty by cracking the seal on the back of the PC. Bad news, the video card is built into the motherboard. So I decided to check the hard drive as the next possible source of the problem.
Good news, pulling her hard drive and putting it into an external housing I can find everything on the drive. No data lost. In fact, the drive may even boot. Not sure, but it may. Bad news, putting another hard drive into her PC, one I know is a boot drive with W2K loaded on it, and her PC won't boot.
So at this point I'm open to feedback, but thinking the mother board took a hit in the power surges from the storms. Yes, it's on a surge protector and that is through a UPS backup/surge protector. Could still be what happened. Or something else. Dunno. I do see lights on the mother board with the box opened, just No Joy on power up.
As for the rain today; in about 2 hours or a bit less we received 10 cm/ 4 inches of rain. At one point it was so thick I couldn't see much past Houdini's doghouse, and that was moved within 30 feet of the Big House to get him away from his old sand-pit and fleas. Our pet sinkhole out in the 'parking lot' turn-around area ... had been brim full of water based on the markings on the walls of the hole. Brim Full. It's drained now, slowly (which is also good news, as opposed to a whoosh drain and larger hole...).
I'm so proud of Houdini. Last summer he'd of been in panic mode with a storm like this one. This time, he went into his doghouse and hunkered down. Maybe that old sock with some other items holding my scent really is helping.
