Computer Update

It wasn't the Power Supply. We had it delivered on Thursday, Jesse replaced it for me during lunch, and I had the computer on long enough to check my email and read about 1.5 of them before my computer suddenly shut off again.

Bummer. BIG bummer. At least it was only about $25 to buy and ship the part. And it did need to be replaced anyway, we figure, since the fan wasn't functioning well. Cooling a computer is important!

When it turned off again, we could still hear the tell-tale faint beeping that signifies that it's overheated. So Jesse opened it up again, and took a look at the heatsink. They're attached to the computer's processor, and attached with thermal glue. This is the part of the computer Jesse has a good bit of experience with through his job, so we're very lucky on that count. He took a look at it, and decided that it looked like the thermal glue had basically squished out over a long period of time. After work, he brought home a small dab of thermal glue from the office, applied it to the heatsink, and viola! My computer is as good as new again. It was overheating because the processor didn't have anything to conduct the heat away from it and into the fan. (The same fan that chewed up my knuckle when I attempted to do my own troubleshooting last week, ironically.)

So, I'm all fixed up! And I'm currently trying to figure out a decent way to back up my 4 years of photos that I was terrified about losing access to. I only have a CD burner on this machine, and I figure it would take at least 20 CDs and an inordinate amount of time to burn all my photos. Jesse has a DVD burner on his machine, and they hold a lot more data, but we're not having any luck at getting the computers to recognize a network that we can share files with. Another option would be to buy an off-board hard drive, and transfer all my files to it, but I'd feel more comfortable with CDs, I think, and hard drives with enough space would run us about $60. I'd rather have a cheaper option. The best bet would be to get the network working, but we're not sure how to fix the problem. We've set up networks in the past without any trouble, so we're fairly confused.

But, for now, I'm back to normal for blogging and internet access, woohoo!