Well, there’s another computer problem “sorted”… for now, at least.

Beastbits, has once again been experiencing pains due to its elderly nature. I’ve said many times now, that the poor bugger is getting on in years, and is no longer the powerhouse it once was. Many parts have been replaced or rejigged, and every time I look at it, I feel a little twinge of sadness as I know it is moving ever closer to the big wheelie bin in the sky.

Yet another problem has been occuring over the past few days, with random shutoffs due to what was possibly heat. The room the machine resides in, isn’t the coolest room in the house, so I put those shutoffs due to it not having adequate cooling. I would touch the CPU’s heatsink to see if I could find any major heat source, but it felt “normal”.

I would also occasionally receive a waft of warm air from the machine, sometimes co-inciding with a smell of cooking silicon. The CPU fan was OK, and the graphics card fan… well, that was OK because it’s not made the grinding noise it normally makes when it needs a clean.

I was sat here a while ago, and got a faint whiff or warm dust. You know, that smell you get when you switch on a gas fire after it’s not been used for a while.

Something was definitely cooking. The CPU fan was OK. I checked the graphics card fan, aaaand promptly burned my finger on the heatsink. Yep, it turns out that the fan was “stuck”. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that one of the power wires for the fan had become detached. from the plug. What a bugger.

I have no way of telling how long it was like this for, but it remains to be seen if this fixes the powering off issues.

In other news, since I’m logged in and typing for once, Chad, my number 1 troll is back in Hartlepool, but thanks to my work commitments and his travel plans, it is very unlikely that we’ll get a chance to meet up again. Hope something can be worked out though.

EDIT: Nope, Bestbits’ problem still remains, still powering off, right when I was in the middle of something I really didn’t want to do anyway. Amazingly it still works after I punched it, watched it slide across the desk before falling over. I’m getting really, really fucking sick of it.