It’s been about 3 months that I have been without my main computer system. Back on June 23rd, my computer had a meltdown. I thought it was the power supply since it failed a power-up test, so I purchased a new 700w unit. I installed that and the system still wouldn’t boot. Since this was right before we were leaving for England, I really didn’t have the time or money to futz with it, so I just stripped out the hard drives, threw them into a server, and walked away. Literally. I installed all the programs I needed for my day-to-day activities on the laptop, setup all the media files on the server to be remotely access, and then quite frankly blocked off my computer room. That was that.

So, since I am having a little get together next Saturday, I decided that it would be a good idea to clean out the computer room. It only took me about 2 hours to clear, clean, and organize the whole room. After all was said and done, Jess was in the living room doing her homework, and I didn’t want to watch TV and disturb her, so I decided to throw my system on the old tech bench and give it a look. Knowing that the trouble had something to do with the video card, I decided to start there. I hooked up a spare power supply and decided to try a dry test. I booted up the system with nothing more than the optical drives installed. The power came on, but nothing happened. No posting, no beeping, no nothing. Knowing full well this is not a good sign, I then delved in. I looked over the motherboard and didn’t see any blown capacitors or scoring. I then decided to tackle the video card. I pulled it from its AGP slot and immediately saw the problem. The fan had quite literally been sheered from the heat sink housing. This explains everything. Without the fan to cool the card, the card overheated, and then shorted out, causing the system to short and not boot anymore. Now I needed to find out how far the damage extended. I got out my box of spare parts and found an old AGP video card. I slapped that bad boy in, had the system blessed by a Priest, and turned it on. To my utter amazement, I saw a BIOS screen. I went into the BIOS setup and was astonished to see that the processor was registering as being fully functional, as well as the RAM. This got me very excited. Long story short, I disassembled the server, put a 40 GB drive in for an OS drive and a 500 GB drive for a storage drive. A Windows XP install later my system is alive and breathing again!

Now the bad news.

Not knowing what unforsaken video card was now in my system, I did a DirectX diagnostic to find out what the hell I had installed. As it turns out, it was an Nvidia TNT2 64 PRO card. For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about, let me try and put it into normal terms. This would be like restoring a nice 1964 Mustang, and then painting it with house paint. It may run great, but it looks like shit.

I went shopping today for a new video card, and I found a decent one at Circuit City. I came home and looked online, and sadly, the better value was in the retail store. So, I think I may head back there this week and pick up the card. I was going to hold off, but when I tried to play Raven Shield tonight, it told me that my video card was not supported. I started to cry. Seriously, Jess had to hold me and shit. It was not a proud moment.

So, now that I have my computer back up and running, I know this is going to sound lame, but I feel whole again. I honestly think that if I didn’t clean the computer room yesterday that my system would still be sitting on the floor collecting dust. It wasn’t until I cleaned the room, cleared my desk, and made a docking area for my laptop that I felt empty. I was sitting at my desk and didn’t have my main system there. All I had was my laptop hooked up to one of my 19” monitors. It just didn’t feel right. Now that I have my main system hooked up to a nice 19” LCD monitor with my laptop right next to me, it feel home again.

It felt so good to have everything back up and running that I even went and downloaded some new wallpapers tonight. Although I have to admit, it was not my idea. Jess actually suggested that since my system is back up to start posting wallpapers again. So if you like today’s wallpaper, you have my awesome wife to thank for it.

I just need to get that video card tomorrow and get my sniping action on.