This Goes Out To Gilbert Heublein

Why?

Because he was the inventor of the hex screws !

Damn !

On a peaceful night, my PC equipped with a new motherboard and CPU, was turned off peacefully. After a peaceful sleep on that peaceful night, the next peaceful day was as peaceful as it could be till the moment I had tried to turn on my PC. It just was not powering on.

Cursing for the all bad luck I was exposed to lately, kicking some sofas here and there, I had taken my PC to a professional technical service. They had told me that the mobo was down. Therefore I had sent the mobo back to where I had purchased it. They peacefully had sent the mobo back to me claiming that there was nothing wrong with it. So I thought I could have been dealing with a problemous PSU, considering the fact that it all had started with electrical irregularities at home. After a peaceful time of planning I decided to purchase a UPS, PSU and a surge protected quadruple plug. Jumping peacefully around with my latest wallet-rapist's arrival, I rushed right to install all components.

However, it still was all a peacefully-dead silence with my PC.

Cursing the day I had met these gadgets called PCs, I sent the mobo and the CPU altogether, since they were the only components I was unable to test at other machines about whether they were working or not. Their technical service there called me to give live feedback about what was up with my mobo (some seller consideration you are rarely likely to see here). He was telling me that both mobo and the installed CPU were right in front of him, running peacefully without any problems during or after the power on. He recommended that I should be testing my RAMs again, after ensuring him that my vid card was on duty right that moment in my homemate's PC. And also that he had encountered an electrical weirdness 7 times last week, caused by the screws that fix the mobo to the case. I was told to be careful about them too.

I got my stuff back yesterday night. I was nearly sure that one of my Twinmos modules were nasty. No, both were not, my machine still was not able to boot, no single glimpse of flow of electricity running through it. It could boot if you insist on pressing the power button several times. But all you could see was either only fans whirring with their lights on, or booting to a point where you'd notice that your keyboard and the mouse was not working.

"If you lose something, it is the last thing you'll find about" rule applied.

As soon as I removed my mobo and placed the anti-static cloth under it, instead of getting it fixed by those Gremlin screws, my PC booted in the first touch right away without any problems, the keyboard and the mouse were running as expected.

I could never knew that those tiny peaceful screws could cause some sort of short-circuitting or some other electrical stupidity. After so much money spent for nothing; okay, let alone the money, in such a time when time is my money, since I'll be using it to invest on myself, I lost 2 months on a stupid problem caused by screws that fixed my mobo to case and to a loooong sleep.

I have written all about this mess in such a boring way to vent off while intending to share this experience with you all out there. Problems can be simpler than simple with your PC, in case there is something weird with it.

Shame on you Mr. Heublein ! Shame on you !

Hello LeftEyeNine,

You mean those screws that attach the mobo to the case right? Aren't those isolated in their own sockets?

Have you fixed it now, or is the PC still out of the box?

Aloha sensei,

Yup, them.

There are round circular shaped tiny plates to place under those screws before driving them into the holes, but maybe some of those plates have lost their ability to isolate, I couldn't make sure.

I got several ones from a local shop's technical service and attached only 2 of the screws with them. I also discovered that one of my Twinmos RAM modules is broken down. How beautiful to know that I need to spend even more money ^^

I'm writing this post from my own gear..At last...

Hello LeftEyeNine,

Only 2 screws, aren't you afraid that it will come off?

Was the module already broken or did that happen today?

I'm afraid of it not booting. I fixed two diagonal screws from each end, it won't be much of a problem I guess.

The module was working, the last time my PC was okay, I mean.

And now another issue: My Samsung SATA HDD which was being used (including my whole music, images archive) is seen as dynamic by Windows XP. And it says it will erase the date to make it basic. I can't think of doing that, no way. I'd better bury the HDD rather than doing it, hoping that some tech could save my data one day.

Seriously I beg for help this time.

:( when it rains it pours.

I've never had that issue at hand and I'ld certainly search the internet first. I expect you'll end up using some Linux tool (maybe a live CD) and copying the whole content of the disk to a new one.

Windows often panics and claims something to be broken, while Linux knows better. An empty answer, sorry.

LEN, you spin a delightfully funny, but sad, tale of your computer woes. Good luck with your hard drive. I've lost a couple myself and know how inconvenient that is. ~:pat: