Back from the dead
On Tuesday I finally got my second replacement PSU, and this time the cables were in fact intact. I actually put the whole thing off for a few days, I was deathly afraid of it not working when I tried it, so I curled up into a ball and sat in bed with the trusty laptop that I’ve now practically inherited from my mom instead. I really got quite used to it at some point. I’ve never been a fan of laptops, but I am now. I will definitely buy one later into the future when I can afford it, it was delightful to have something portable around.
Today I finally ventured into the real world, I opened up the package with the PSU and got to it. Lo and behold, 5 minutes later when I pressed the power button my computer actually powered up. God, what a wonderful feeling. I’m glad to know that it indeed was the PSU that was the problem as I (almost) first suspected. Had it not worked this time I think I might have started crying or something. I do consider myself quite competent when it comes to both hardware and software related issues, so when there’s something I can’t figure out I get awfully frustrated.
I then almost panicked when after configuring the BIOS the computer froze up right after getting past the BIOS boot screen with the text “Verifying DMI pool data (update success)”. I tried restarting a few times, which only led to the same text, only this time without the “(updated success)” part. Googling the text revelead a lot of forum posts with the same issues, but the amount of various fixes just didn’t help me any. I read a lot of the possible causes, and I was frightened when I read that a dead hard drive might be the cause of it. I’ve got 4×250gb SATA drives, completely full to the rim with data — losing that would have made me want to kill myself. To my extreme delight, changing the boot order of the drives fixed the issue. When the first two reorderings proved unsuccessful it was looking grim, but luckily the third time was the charm and the lovely Windows boot logo appeared.
I’ve spent the last couple of hours migrating back to my own computer, which so far has involved downloading about 10.000 mails (99%) of it being spam), and transferring the files I’ve racked up on the laptop over to my own computer. While poking around the computer when I was installing the PSU and SATA cables, my eyes veered to the back of my graphics card, and I noticed that it has two outputs, one VGA and one DVI connection. And here I’ve been for almost two years, with my CRT screen connected and my LCD screen collecting dust right next to it when my secondary computer passed away. I never thought to check if my GFX card had two connections before, god what an idiot I am. So now I’ve got a dual monitor setup, which is just awesome. It’s also made me realize just how awful CRT screen really are. God the difference between my main monitor and the LCD screen is frightening. When I can afford it I will definitely replace my CRT for a second LCD screen.
The last few hours I’ve scoured my Windows setup to see if there’s anything I need to worry about, as I am just about to replace my Windows installation with a Linux distro. Completely cold turkey so to speak. My mind is leaning towards downloading Kubuntu, but we’ll see.