So naturally, on a Sunday after the shops have closed and before a week in which I am a) working 9-5 and b) having a new bathroom installed, my desktop PC decides to blow a gasket. *headdesks forever* I'm assuming the motherboard has gone at this point as it just went dead in mid-use but didn't power down and refused to let me switch it off at all. On the off chance it was just temporary overheating, I took the cover off and went at it with the ol' compressed air but it was still DoA when I tried switching it back on later. I'll try once more tomorrow, when its had a full 24 hours plus to cool off, and if it's still dead, will assume motherboard is fried and buy a replacement. *whimpers*

Why now, Fate, when I'm shelling out money like confetti on the bathroom, hmm? HMM?!? *glares*

In the meantime, thank allllllllll the gods for laptops and routers that are straightforward to use. *cuddles her internet*

(Added annoyance: the laptop's due for repair - battery fails to hold a charge any more- and I was going to take it in this week. Oh well at least the PC blew BEFORE I'd taken the laptop in, that really would have added insult to injury. Just hope I can get the laptop sorted before I go away in August)

PS: Is swapping out a motherboard hard? Can a semi-technical me handle it do you think, oh wise flist?

PPS: Hope to heck I can figure out what motherboard I had. I think I put the specs in LJ somewhere......*offers up prayers to patron saint of dormice*

Compy died in a new and interesting fashion last night. It switched itself off while I was in mid-internet browse. "Umm," I thought, "that's not good!" It has been blisteringly hot in my lounge and it was making a bit of noise so I took the case off and cleaned off the fans. The box inside was seriously hot, too hot to touch. I ulped. Put everything back together and switched it on - nuffink. Totally dead.

So I left it until this morning, figuring 12 hours to cool down completely wouldn't hurt and tried it this morning. Lo! It turned on! Blue power light, gentle humming from the box. BUT - I have no power to the peripherals - no keyboard, no monitor, no mouse, no modem *boggles* If it was the motherboard, I wouldn't have thought it would have switched on at all? Likewise if there was a problem with the power supply. Hrm. Anyway, the really good news is as far as I know it's still under warranty (it was bought at the end of last July), and I will phone PC World at lunchtime and check that if I take it over to the Stevenage store and wail at them, it'll get fixed.

Now I have a very shiny laptop and, had I been able to find my modem set up cd, I could have had internet connectivity last night. But for the first time in forever, the set up cd was nowhere to be found. Isn't it bloomin' always the way? *headdesks* So until the box gets fixed/replaced or I find the set up cd, I will be internet-less from home for the duration. And while I can access LJ/FB from work, I can't get to email, so no email for meeeeee for a while. If you need me, I'm clinging to my mobile more than usual :D (Note to self: get a damn iPhone!!)

Compy died. A friend opened it up to put in some more memory and the motherboard reacted by falling over with a sound roughly like "Acccck". Luckily said friend has spare compy which I'm currently using and which has my hard drive installed so I'm not bereft and PC-less. *petses the friend*

Went up to PC World, found a perfect replacement ...and it's out of stock. Gits. Gotta wait until maybe Wednesday. Bah. *sulks*

Also now need to sell or try and get the money back for the new hard drive/2 gig of RAM I bought to upgrade the Ex-PC. Should be able to get the money back on the RAM, still have the receipt for that, and it's still sealed into its packs so hopefully that won't be a problem.

Have a splitting headache, partly due to peering at spreadsheets all day, partly due to wacky sleep patterns yesterday and possibly due to lack of food. The latter two are easily cured, fortunately.

And I still have shiny Leverage DVDs to watch, so all is not completely made of suck :)

Stupid computers. Hates them, hates them precioussssss.

OK, maybe I just hate this one :p

My copy of AVG Free stopped working. I uninstalled and tried re-installing it from the file I originally installed it from. It's corrupted, says my PC, bugger off and find another download! So I did. And every.single.one refuses to install. Good grief, they can't all be corrupted! *glares at PC*

So I rummaged and tried another free virus program - and that misfired so badly it took me 15 minutes and 3 reboots to uninstall it! It kept finding a virus called something like XPACK -SR/something.XPACK and kept finding it, over and over and over and over and over again. So I'd keep getting the alert box telling me "Look Mummy, look what I've found!" which buggered everything up nicely and meant it was a pain in the arse getting anything else to run.

I've got it uninstalled now but clearly I have a virus and, it would seem to me, it's fubar'ing my anti-virus downloads. Can anyone recommend another free anti-virus program? Something a tad more robust?

Techie types - is there an easy way of getting at what's in a PC's cd-rom drive when the bloody thing refuses to open? I've lost a DVD disc and I'm wondering if it got stuck in the old, dead PC. I've taken the side casing off but got foiled at that point because I don't possess a screwdriver of the right size to assist me in dismantling everything else :P It occurred to me that before I start entertaining ideas of mallets and chisels, I should prolly ask here first :)

Does anyone here perform exorcisms on electrical goods? I'm only half kidding. I'm coming to the conclusion every device in my house hates me :P

My brand new digibox, installed by Sky after weeks of pain and signal problems, has decided it doesn't like being switched on so it switches itself off. Then on again. Then off. Then occasionally, by way of variety, it shuts itself down completely (i.e. it's not on standby, it's OFF off...). I have, at the moment, having spent the first half of this week beating the snot out of the power cable and all the other connections, finally got it to stay switched on for 3 days. However I'm terrified to sneeze within 3 feet of the thing in case it goes off again. And on again. And off again...*wibbles*

I will ring Sky and wail at them and with a bit of luck it'll still be under warranty from the last visit so there should be no call out charge. Again. And I can get a new box. Can't have the call out until at least a week on Friday though, so I can accrue some hours towards the time off I'll need.

Then there's my oh so shiny new PC. The one that's a week old. The one that's decided it hates DVDs and videos and will have a hissy fit by rebooting itself. Sadly, the error report doesn't have enough detail for PC World to determine the cause, so having spent 30 minutes on hold to the 24 hour support line (at least this time around, I HAVE support for any PC issues), the nice man at the end of the phone showed me how to turn off the "reboot when there's an error" problem, so that next time, I'll get a Blue Screen of Death with an error message that will actually tell them what the problem is. Happily, thanks to the support package I bought, they will just fix anything at no cost to me, beyond possibly needing yet another day off work. *sighs* Maybe I can get them and Sky to visit on the same day.

So yes. Old priest, young priest, whatever - I have a small job for you :P