Funny story...

[Ragenule]

Well, I just recently finished upgrading my parent's computer, but that isn't the story. The story is WHY I had to.

Basically, my dad was freaking out about hearing that XP Home was off mainsteam support (is it? I can't remember), so he bought XP Pro. Now, as we were installing XP Pro, the computer froze. So I had to bring his HDD over and wipe it clean (His computer froze while it was reformating the HDD). So I brought it back over and nearing the finish of copying the installation files to the HDD my dad's computer froze again. So, we rebooted it. Nothing came up on the monitor and I didn't hear the single BEEP signifying that everything was okay. So I reboot it again, and we do hear a beep this time, but then the computer hung again with no video output. So I took his video card and test it, its working fine. By this time we smell a horrible smell similar to melting plastic, so I disconnected everything and opened up the side panel. The mobo was fried (*shakes fist at Pro-tan*)! So a couple days later we go out to a computer store with the info of the rest of the hardware, and it ends up we had to buy not only a new mobo, but a new video card, new ram, and a new CPU. When we got home we started connecting everything until we noticed we needed a new power supply as well. The mobo needed a 20 pin, and the original power supply was a 16 pin. So after supper, we head out to a close store and grap a generic power supply for 40 bucks Canadian. we put it in, and then noticed that the front display on the case couldn't turn on due to it having no power. Put the Power Supply had no cable available for it. So the front isn't working currently. Afterwards, we finally installed XP Pro.

The funny part is, I wanted MY computer to be upgraded this christmas, and before my Dads computer broke, he had DDR ram, and his video card worked in my machine as well. So, effectively, by some weird divine intervention, My computer was able to be upgraded as he gave me his old video card and his ram.

[xonomech]

a chrimas tale? some tragic doesnt?

[Smokey]

Lol, that reminds me of my friends dads old pc...

He had a PC that was home-built and serviced by an aquaintance of them who had a smal pc store run from his shed and claimed he knew a lot of computers...
It all worked fine but after a while it became more and more unstable so they took it back. The guy reinstalled windows and claimed that the problem was fixed... It wasn't and they kept taking it back time and time again, for about half a year (how ignorent can you be?!).
After so long even my patience was running out and I told (read: ordered) them to hand the thing over to me. I took it back to my house and the first thing I did was to open the case (I always do that, plus I was curious about the hardware) to find an enormous pile of dust. Thinking to myself "uh-oh, this can't be good, only old compacs and IBM's can survive this", I immediately removed the processor's heatsink and saw a perfect layout of the processor burnt into said heatsink. having found the problem I went to find the cause, wich I found when I turned the heatsink over and removed the fan..... There was a 2 millimeter thick layer of dust blocking all airflow from the fan (wich is bad for a Thunderbird Athlon, known to be hotheads)...
Sooo, I took the PC back and told them their PC was dead, I didn't even want to try to salvage it and that their "PC-expert" was a complete clot...

They now have a Packard-Hell AMD wich runs perfectly because they listened to me for a change and keep it clean...

BTW they kept that old thing for about a half year and called it "deep-fryer" on the network after i called it a KFC (kentucky fried computer)...