New PC

A few days ago, I heard one of those sounds that you know can’t be good coming from my computer. At first, I wasn’t sure whether it was the fan or the hard drive, but later decided that it was the fan. Still, I quick tap to the back of the cabinet seemed to fix it. It happened again last night, so I cleaned out the dust and everything seemed normal.

**CRASH!** Suddenly, my computer locks up and I hear the gutteral death throes of my hard drive. NOOOOOO!!!! I turn the computer off, let it cool down and try it again. After a quick disk scan, the computer booted up and was working properly, but I knew the prognosis – I would need an immediate disc replacement. If I could just get it to last long enough to buy a new Hard Drive so that I could move my data over, everything would be fine.This morning, I foolishly decided to check on the computer – and now it won’t boot. It gets to the WinXP loading screen (yes, I’m a Windows user – flame away), and then shuts down completely. Not the power
– because I still have power to the keyboard and monitor – but just to the PC. Now I’m scared. If the hard drive has fried, I’m going to need expert help to get my data back, and despite the fact that I have been backing it up fairly regularly, there is still about a month of work on there that would be unrecoverable.

But the worse thought (or better, depending no perspective) would be that the problem is my processor, my motherboard – or both. In that case, I’ll be able to at least salvage my data, but that means a new PC to be bought. NOT the expense I was planning on making.

Update: Unfortunately, the hard drive is (probably) fine – my processor and mother board went. On the plus side, it means that I get a new PC, although I am skimping a little bit right now to save some money until I have that whopping ‘free turkey’ bonus check. I can always get the advanced graphics board and the flat screen after Xmas. To start with, I’ll have a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, 48x CD-RW and 16X DVD-ROM to get me through reinstalling EVERYTHING I had. But it will be a better video card than I had, a better sound card than I had, and more hard drive and RAM than I had. It’s a start. But my wife is going to kill me as I get the itch to finish it off…

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