I do not usually update with news about how the computers in the house are doing, but this was sort of a special occasion. Almost every computer in the house actually needed some sort of repair in the past few weeks. Honestly, this is not the last time I will be working on some of these computers. This will all inevitably repeat itself sooner or later. Hopefully next time it will not all happen so close together.

The first computer that started causing a problem was the Dell in the den that the kids and Grandma use. That computer has become increasingly loud over time and it was time to clean it out. That meant alcohol wipes and dismantling it, to the best of my ability, in order to remove as much junk from inside the case as I could. The computer is running much quieter, but I also found out that my daughter can not connect her iPod to the computer unless I (the only one with an administrator account that has access to install things) updates iTunes. I was not aware of this. While I was taking it apart anyway I replaced some screwed and generally made sure everything was well connected.

I actually had to get some information off of an IDE hard drive, and so I went downstairs to retrieve the old Dell, because I do not have an external case with IDE anymore. That computer has really been falling apart and I had no intention on keeping it for very long anyway, but it sort of made that decision for me. The computer was making a loud buzzing noise and it was not acting at all like it should. I opened up the case and it turned out that the clips on the heatsink were broken. I do not know if someone moved this computer very roughly at one point when they were cleaning the basement, but needless to say this is not worth repairing and that computer is now in the trash.

I do not usually update with news about how the computers in the house are doing, but this was sort of a special occasion. Almost every computer in the house actually needed some sort of repair in the past few weeks. Honestly, this is not the last time I will be working on some of these computers. This will all inevitably repeat itself sooner or later. Hopefully next time it will not all happen so close together.

Next I was accepted into the Age of Empires Online beta. That is not the problem though. The problem is that the Dell laptop does not seem to want to run this game very well, so I installed it on the computer I build downstairs. Playing the game for any extended period of time resulted in motherboard beeps. Looked up the beeps, because every motherboard has beeps that mean something and the best thing is to consult the manual. I did not have the manual, but I do have internet access. The error was for overheating. That did not make sense to me, so I took the computer apart. All the fans were running and there was barely any dust in the case. When I went to move the heatsink and fan on the processor I noticed that it was not very secure. Turns out one of the plastic clips broke, which is actually on searching the internet a very common complaint. A heatsink and fan that are not making a good connection to a processor will definitely cause overheating.

I was going to order a new one online, but it turned out that a friend of mine had an extra one. He had actually bought the same processor as me at one point, but he does not use stock heatsink and fans. Honestly I should have searched out another option, since this problem could very well occurring again, but right now free seems to be the better choice. I do not plan on moving this computer around any time soon, so hopefully everything holds together. Heatsink paste, installed the heatsink and fan, and I have played games and left the computer running. I even installed a program that shows the current temperature of the processor cores and everything is running very smoothly.

The Acer had an update that fixed an issue with the HDMI. I have always sort of wanted to stream things straight from the computer to the TV, so I tried to update the bios. Big mistake apparently, because it ended up bricking the motherboard. Ordered a new motherboard and an external floppy drive. The floppy drive did not work (Windows + B to enter into a bios recovery mode, but that was apparently gone), so I installed the new motherboard. Everything was not going well, so I opted (while I was at it right) to format the hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista, which is what the Acer came with.

Now I have never liked Windows Vista, but the final straw was when the computer installed 100 updates, restarted, and the screen said that the updates did not configure correctly, so the Acer was in the process of reverting the changes. Having waited well over an hour for the updates to finish in the first place this was completely unacceptable. Got some help from a friend, new “unofficial” bios, and Windows 7 later the computer is running much better. I still have a screw that I do not know where it goes though, and that sort of concerns me. I will have to take a look and figure out where that goes.

The only thing left to do for right now is get ink for the Canon Pixma MP250. I am sure that will not be a problem at all, it is just more money and a little more time that I will be spending this month on something computer related.