Computer Trouble

Sorry, to all my faithful readers (all one of you), my computer went on the fritz yesterday, and there were some awfully tense moments around my apartment as I tried desperately to resurrect her.

She seems to be working ok now, but if there's anyone out there who knows anything about such things, who also happens to be reading this blog, I'd appreciate any input you can offer. And yes, I realize the odds of that being the case are slim to none, with slim hanging on for dear life to the last train out of town.

Basically I started getting pop-up messages saying that something connected to a USB port was malfunctioning (the options are my wireless router and remote control receiver for my cable box, which I watch on my PC via Windows Media Center), and then the computer began to lock up, eventually necessitating a shutdown via the power button. Trying to restart, the same thing happened. And again. Finally, I figured I was in big trouble, me without a backup external hard drive and therefore about to lose most of my music and all of my pictures, not to mention a PC that had originally cost me about $1300, so I resorted to opening up the tower to see if I could see anything obvious. And I did.

To make a long story even longer, when I first purchased the computer from Dell about four years ago, it died after six months, blue screen of death, everything. Apparently it had been put together with shoddy hardware, something that seems to be no uncommon with Dells. Not having purchased the warranty, I was pretty pissed to have a $1300 paperweight after six months of use, but I was able to get send an email to a higher-up at Dell, and he apparently finagled it so that I could get in touch with a Dell repairman, who (at least partially) fixed it for me at no charge. A bad motherboard, he told me. Not a bad deal, considering, but it shouldn't have ever come to that point to begin with, at least not after just six months. And to top it off, yes, he did get the computer running again, and (up until yesterday) it hasn't given me any trouble since, but when it was returned, the outer casing was slightly cracked, so that it didn't fit snugly and has had to be held in place with tape ever since.

The end result of all of this was that when I opened up the casing yesterday, I discovered that over the course of four years, with a slightly cracked casing, the interior of the computer had accumulated quite a bit of dust. In particular, the grating on the rear of the fan unit was basically covered. I cleaned everything, primarily by blowing really hard, but using a paper towel to clean off the fan housing, and when I had put everything back together, and hooked it all up again, it seems to be working fine.

So I suppose the end result of all this is A) If something you buy without a warranty malfunctions way too early, don't give up until you speak to someone at the top; and B) Periodically dust the interior of your computer, paying special attention to the fan. What a boring, boring post. I really hope no one actually reads this through to the end...