My computer DIED on me tonight. Died as in dead, would not boot.
Not a happy thing.
When I would try turning it on it would do a few clicks, and, just as the monitor started showing the pre-boot (I assume from something in ROM) brand image, it would go "click" and be dead.
Now, what was happening when I had this problem? I was over in SecondLife, at the Info Island 1st Anniversary party, watching the fireworks. I am thinking that maybe the fireworks (which, for the most part were more "exploding blobs" ala a hyperactive Lava Lite than "fireworks" per se) involved a lot of stress on the video card, as there were many complex things all happening in quick succession. Anyway, in the middle of this I notice that my screen had frozen ... and not just SL "lag", but my mouse was not working and ctrl-alt-del wasn't being recognized. Uh-Oh. So, I did a power button shut-down and then tried to reboot. Into the click-click-click-dead as described above.
So, suspect #1 was the video card. I got into the system, removed the card, plugged the monitor into the "integrated video" jack, and tried re-booting again, but still got click-click-click .... pause (more time on the brand screen)-dead. So, I unplug the system and let it sit for a while. After about 5-10 minutes I try again ... click-click-click ... brand screen ... boot screen ... WINDOWS! Phew! I mess around a bit poke into a few things in the Control Panel, and decide that a "clean" shut-down might be useful. So, I go through the standard Windows process to turn off the computer and try to reboot. Click-click-click-dead. Again ... and again ... and again. Not Happy.
Thinking that it worked after a long shut-down, I walk away and go watch some TV. Come back and try again. Click-click-click-dead. Click-click-click-dead. Click-click-click-boot ... get into Windows, start firing things up and suddenly no keyboard or mouse. Power down ... reboot ... click-click-click-boot-Windows. Which brings be to being on-line writing this now. Obviously, however, Something Is Not Right with the system. I wanted to get this jotted down, though, while I was in here, just in case ANYBODY OUT THERE HAS ANY SUGGESTIONS? Since I can at least check for comments from some other machine if things go south again with this one.
I'm thinking (still) that the "fireworks display" over in SL over-taxed the video card and that the video card in turn did something unpleasant to the Mother Board, but I've not been able to figure out anything so far (I just got a pop-up about Windows not recognizing a USB device attached to the machine (much like it was suddenly not seeing the mouse and keyboard on the previous attempt), and I'm thinking it's the printer. Damn.
Anyway, I'm going to do a security sweep just to make sure there weren't any nasties creeping into my system with the SL upgrade that downloaded today, and wanted to get this up just in case I have further problems with the system.
Hope to be back soon.