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Description
I haven't been able to visit DA, work with fractals and scripts, or keep up with correspondence lately. This picture shows a computer I built about 7 years ago which failed and is one reason for my absence.

It's the system I've been using for Internet and also contains the bulk of work that I've done in those years.
(A newer, 3 year-old system now serves as my main working/rendering station but it remains intentionally disconnected from the Web.)

The system in the picture worked fine through all of those seven years - blue screens were extraordinarily rare and usually the rare failures would be related to overheating or some VM glitch that boiled over into the main system.
Rather abruptly a few weeks ago the system booted up and sent me into BIOS to restore settings.
While I was looking at the temperature monitor in BIOS the machine froze. When I used the reset button the system started but the screen remained blank and the HDD led did not stay lit or show any activity the way it usually does during a normal boot.

After several weeks of struggling and reading loads of old forum posts about the same or similar problems I finally got the system back up and running.
(OH, and I had to set up a 3rd system to get onto the web so I could search for info on the problem.

I can't detail all of the steps I took but what I eventually found out was that the processor apparently did not seat very well in my first several attempts to re-install it (in this particular system).
After I reinstalled the processor a few times and transferred many parts repeatedly between systems I finally got this failed system to boot. For a while I would still get the blank screen but if I turned the system off and wiggled the processor just a bit it seemed to do the trick. The system booted up properly again... most of the time. But the wiggle trick got me booting again. (I definitely am NOT recommending people try this trick with their own systems that may have some stubborn problem.)

The processor now seems to be more firmly seated - or at least any weak connections seemed to have better contacts.
I've been able to boot reliably for about 4 or 5 days and standby even works again.

One really good unanticipated outcome (so far) is that my processor and hard drive temperatures are all much lower.
So I guess I did something right.
I also clearly remember being overconfident that I had this problem fixed the very first time I got the system to reboot after the failure. I was proven wrong that time and I may still see further problems (and disappear from web activity again). The graphics card (BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC) produces artifacts on two different systems. Fortunately it has a "lifetime warranty" but I haven't looked closely at the fine print to see what that phrase might actually mean.

I have submitted one claim on a lifetime warranty from a different mfg (Kingmax) who came through and sent me two sticks of replacement memory for a much older Pentium III system though that particular type of memory had long been out of production.

I'm cautiously happy at the moment.
Compared to the shocked "all is lost" feeling I had when the machine first failed, I'm actually considerably relieved.

Description
I haven't been able to visit DA, work with fractals and scripts, or keep up with correspondence lately. This picture shows a computer I built about 7 years ago which failed and is one reason for my absence.

It's the system I've been using for Internet and also contains the bulk of work that I've done in those years.
(A newer, 3 year-old system now serves as my main working/rendering station but it remains intentionally disconnected from the Web.)

The system in the picture worked fine through all of those seven years - blue screens were extraordinarily rare and usually the rare failures would be related to overheating or some VM glitch that boiled over into the main system.
Rather abruptly a few weeks ago the system booted up and sent me into BIOS to restore settings.
While I was looking at the temperature monitor in BIOS the machine froze. When I used the reset button the system started but the screen remained blank and the HDD led did not stay lit or show any activity the way it usually does during a normal boot.

After several weeks of struggling and reading loads of old forum posts about the same or similar problems I finally got the system back up and running.
(OH, and I had to set up a 3rd system to get onto the web so I could search for info on the problem.

I can't detail all of the steps I took but what I eventually found out was that the processor apparently did not seat very well in my first several attempts to re-install it (in this particular system).
After I reinstalled the processor a few times and transferred many parts repeatedly between systems I finally got this failed system to boot. For a while I would still get the blank screen but if I turned the system off and wiggled the processor just a bit it seemed to do the trick. The system booted up properly again... most of the time. But the wiggle trick got me booting again. (I definitely am NOT recommending people try this trick with their own systems that may have some stubborn problem.)

The processor now seems to be more firmly seated - or at least any weak connections seemed to have better contacts.
I've been able to boot reliably for about 4 or 5 days and standby even works again.

One really good unanticipated outcome (so far) is that my processor and hard drive temperatures are all much lower.
So I guess I did something right.
I also clearly remember being overconfident that I had this problem fixed the very first time I got the system to reboot after the failure. I was proven wrong that time and I may still see further problems (and disappear from web activity again). The graphics card (BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC) produces artifacts on two different systems. Fortunately it has a "lifetime warranty" but I haven't looked closely at the fine print to see what that phrase might actually mean.

I have submitted one claim on a lifetime warranty from a different mfg (Kingmax) who came through and sent me two sticks of replacement memory for a much older Pentium III system though that particular type of memory had long been out of production.

I'm cautiously happy at the moment.
Compared to the shocked "all is lost" feeling I had when the machine first failed, I'm actually considerably relieved.