I just added another external hard drive to my Linux system, and now I’m wondering about a few potential issues. At this point I have one permanently attached external hard drive, one backup hard drive that I only hook up occasionally, my iPod (which I mostly use on my Windows laptop because I don’t want to miss out on iTunes, but which I want to be able to occasionally hook up to my Linux box to transfer files, etc....
For some reason it seems like I’m just not very lucky with computers right now… After my recent (and still somewhat ongoing) PC issues, my laptop gave up over the Thanksgiving weekend. This is a Compaq Presario R3000Z that is less than half a year old and that I’m otherwise extremely happy with. All of a sudden, the screen stopped working. Of course, I couldn’t resist taking the computer apart to see if this problem might have a simple cause, such as a disconnected cable....
After some research and comparison shopping, I decided to buy the following components to replace my defective motherboard: For the most part, I am very happy with this combination, although I still have some serious problems. Read below for more… ...
It turned out that it’s not the power supply. I guess I should have known, as the LEDs on the motherboard still light up. At this point it seems most likely that the motherboard is fried. This itself isn’t too bad, as my motherboard and processor are about 2 1/2 years old now and they weren’t exactly cutting edge back then. So I guess it’s time to get a new motherboard and processor....
This morning my PC’s video display suddenly shut down. When I tried to reboot it, it got through the initial boot sequence and died again right after it switched into graphics mode during the Windows startup. As I had similar problems with my previous ATI card, I wasn’t particularly surprised… I turned the PC off and decided to troubleshoot the problem after work. After I got back, I tried to start the PC again....