Dead PC

When I tried to use my computer yesterday morning, all I had was a black screen. The drive light was going nuts, then went solid green for several minutes, then nothing. Uh oh. I did a full power-down reboot, but no joy. The fan on the video card hasn't worked in months, but by running with the cover off, I've been mostly getting away with it. Every once in a while, it overheats and I need to leave the machine off while the video card cools down. Then all is well until the next warm day. It had hit 80 on Wednesday, so I powered everything off and pointed a fan into the case until the video card was stone cold. Nothing.

Crap.

So tonight's agenda is a trip to Best Buy to grab a cheap video card. I don't need anything spectacular; just something that can pump 1080p out an HDMI cable. Given that this is the second failed ATI card since I purchased this PC in 2008, I'm a bit shy of ATI. One failure is bad luck. Two is just bad. I'll see what Best Buy has in stock and for how much; I'm really hoping to get out of this without spending a crap-ton of money.

Stupid PC's.

Meanwhile our ancient Toshiba we bought when we left Michigan in 2006 is still chugging along, although it is in desperate need of more memory and a direct network connection (the wireless is painfully slow). Other than that, it works perfectly for what we do with it.

That's it. If you don't hear anything from me for a while, you'll know I lost patience with some pimple-faced dweeb and stabbed him to death with my old video card.