Boredworkers.com

After weeks of downtime, I finally chased down the problem(s) with my PC, and got it working. I am tapping this out live to you from my desktop at home. In the words of Victor Frankenstein as he brought his creation to life, “IT’S ALIVE!!“. I shout those words (in my mind) with mixed emotions. For one, I am relieved that the ordeal is nearly over.

You might be asking why I used the words “nearly over” instead of “finally over”. Well, the answer is a long story in its telling. So we might as well start from where we last left off.

After diagnosing the problem and sourcing it to the motherboard (or so I thought), I went to Low Yatt to search for a replacement Socket-370 board. Asking around, I found several stores stocking the said model. Some were with built in VGA (which I wasn’t interested in) while others had an AGP slot (yep, that’s the one for me). Most of these boards are OEM. That means that they don’t come in any special manufacturer’s box or anything. The one I got came is by Storm. Price wise, the old Socket-370 boards range between RM210.00 (USD55.00) and RM245.00 (USD65.00), depending on the model and the shop where you enquire. As for the graphics card, I went back to the shop and swapped it for something else, but that’s a story for another day.

When I got home yesterday, the first thing I tried was to switch on the power just to make sure my old motherboard was indeed dead. The CPU fan started for a while and then all a sudden, it stopped. There was no power! I nearly freaked out, thinking that my power supply had malfunctioned or something had short-circuited somewhere. Deciding that it was my old motherboard that was giving the problem, I went ahead and swapped in the old one (besides, if I burned my new board, it was still under warranty).

An hour later, after tightening the last screw and plugging in the power, I hit the switch… NOTHING! OMG! NOT THAT BOUNCING MESSAGE AGAIN! The impossible was happening. Was I doing something wrong? Had I plugged in the freaking graphics card in reverse?? Doubtful unless I had a big hole in the middle of the motherboard!

Checking all the connections in turn, I finally came to the utterly unbelievable conclussion that it was my MONITOR that was giving me problems! NOT my graphics card, NOT my motherboard, NOT my other hardware, BUT my nifty 6-month old LCD monitor that can do that rotating thing that most of your’s can’t do. HAH! Talk about irony. Talk about foolish pride. Talk about PANIC!

I managed to find an old 14″ monitor CRT (Cathod Ray Tube) and lugged the monster up to my bedroom, plugged it in and rebooted the PC. Lo behold! I see pictures (although I did have to repair Windows to manage that feat)! I think that about confirms my worst fears. It had finally boiled down to my monitor being broken, instead of the other hundred parts that I had on my list. The least likely suspect was finally revealed to be the damned culprit!

And that’s when the panic began. Where was the receipt? I searched my whole room for nearly an hour before the panic overtook me. It is a sick feeling that starts in the stomach and builds to a point that you start seeing stars everywhere you look. My brain finally gave in and I laid on my bed feeling lonely and depressed. That’s when the sandman visited and I slept for about 3 hours.

Waking up, I renewed my search with vigour. The reward was that I found the receipt hidden away in a Coffee Bean mooncake box. The relief that washed over me was akin to what I imagine it would feel like to win a grueling hard fought marathon.

So the moral of this series is to never jump to conclussions. No matter how likely it is that your conclussion is right, don’t take it for granted. As they like to say in CSI, evidence is everything. Check and double-check all aspects of a problem before and accertain that the solution is the right one. Apply it to everything you do. Trust me, it will save you alot of grief in the long run (especially in work).

As for this particular problem, I’ll be bringing my LCD monitor to the shop this weekend and hopefully, they’ll be able to get it working for me. Hopefully it doesn’t take too long cause working on a 14″ monitor with 800×600 resolution sure is a pain.