The One in Which I Turn On the PC
Aug. 4th, 2015 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidgillonI got back on Thursday, I finally managed to turn on my desktop PC this morning.
Not for lack of trying, I've probably pressed the blasted on-off switch a hundred times a day, but it has been getting more and more unreliable for the last couple of years*, taking repeated attempts to turn on, but never this bad.
I finally found the trick to getting the front fascia off last night, and dismantled the micro-switch from its housing. It powered up at the first attempt at pressing it directly, so I powered it down in order to reconnect everything I'd disconnected while fiddling about with screwdrivers, only for it to refuse to power up again. Much cursing and several hundred clicks later it's finally deigned to power up again.
I've got at least two cases in the house that could donate replacement on-off switches, and they're pennies at Amazon, but Dell have designed the blasted thing so the only way to get at the connector on the motherboard is to quite literally dismantle the entire thing, and I don't think my coordination's up to it any more.
Back in the Evil Aerospace days I could probably have gotten a friend to do it for me, but everyone I might have asked has fled the country to work for Airbus.
So I guess the blasted thing is just going to have to stay on all of the time (it pretty much did anyway, but I'll think twice before turning it off when I'm away from home now).
Computers, bah!
*It's almost 7 years old, but still a decent spec as I bought high-end as a post-redundancy indulgence.
Not for lack of trying, I've probably pressed the blasted on-off switch a hundred times a day, but it has been getting more and more unreliable for the last couple of years*, taking repeated attempts to turn on, but never this bad.
I finally found the trick to getting the front fascia off last night, and dismantled the micro-switch from its housing. It powered up at the first attempt at pressing it directly, so I powered it down in order to reconnect everything I'd disconnected while fiddling about with screwdrivers, only for it to refuse to power up again. Much cursing and several hundred clicks later it's finally deigned to power up again.
I've got at least two cases in the house that could donate replacement on-off switches, and they're pennies at Amazon, but Dell have designed the blasted thing so the only way to get at the connector on the motherboard is to quite literally dismantle the entire thing, and I don't think my coordination's up to it any more.
Back in the Evil Aerospace days I could probably have gotten a friend to do it for me, but everyone I might have asked has fled the country to work for Airbus.
So I guess the blasted thing is just going to have to stay on all of the time (it pretty much did anyway, but I'll think twice before turning it off when I'm away from home now).
Computers, bah!
*It's almost 7 years old, but still a decent spec as I bought high-end as a post-redundancy indulgence.
