My Journal

After almost a year of disaster with this computer that I might have been ripped off from craigslist, I may have resolved the issue.

All the resolutions that I had come up with have failed from time to time. Except this, eventhough I'm still in the process of reinstalling Windows XP, it seems to work through all the "sighing" points. I think this is it.

Ah yes. So what is the problem? I believe it is something I have, quite unbelievably, missed. It seems that all the rest of the original components and parts are fine except the fan for the CPU. It has only 1 side of the metallic hook which secures it on the CPU so that the CPU would not overheat. And without the other hook, this have made it difficult to be able to completely attach its surface to the entire surface area of the CPU. The single hook has caused such imbalance. So I removed it and just hardly pressed it onto the CPU so that it stuck to the CPU with whatever's left of the thermal paste on the CPU.

I did not even notice the missing hook of the CPU fan. Well, the lost of time, a few months, and money spent on the extra but now ready-to-be-sold parts, I do consider worthwhile because I learned something or rather something I have realized to take note of.

If I was ripped off when I bought this, then I have learned something he has not. His brother, if that is really his brother, has even asked me to hang out together since we are into the tech stuff. I may just do that, if I could find that email address in my gmail archive. Then again, it could have been caused by a minor accident which lost the pin while moving the tower to my place, could it not? Hardly. It may not be something so easily missed since he gave me a free ride home.

Now I'd just have to find a second hook. Otherwise, it's not so assured.

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Well, at first I thought it was the memory. After an unfair trade, I might be wrong. Then it's the PSU, and no. Then the motherboard, wrong again(but the MSI 845PE/Neo does have a working FDD controller, unlike the old one with the machine). Then the only defected suspects left are the ATI video card and the 200GB HDD. I am not able to find the replacement for such to test them out. So, I could only wonder. Since I had bad experience with ATI products, I started to doubt it's ATI.

But this doubt leads to a dead end. So I had only the choice of eliminating the HDD being a suspect. All the test, and finally, I switched cables with DVD-ROM, seems to install right this time.

All this is about a HDD cable? The pevious one does seem bent at more places than the one now.

One problem with this new mobo is the reset button. Don't seem to reset. Just blank. Turns off instead. But this is less crucial.

[@more@]Well, looks like it's the ATI card. But when I put the original one back after installing Windows XP, everything works fine. Hope this is for good.

I came across a good CMS module which is good for designing a virtual course. Perhaps even a virtual school? It has high recommendation from opensourceCMS.com. Of course, since it was a PhD Research.

Perhaps I'd use it someday. I have a few online courses of my own to share.

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