So, I've got this W2K comp., running some CAD software, and it starts screwing up. Like, "Unhandled exception" errors and it dumps all of my work. So, I reinstall the app, and it's still screwing up. So, I decide to finally run some kind of virus scan, and the machine is all infected. Well, since I don't have money to buy antivirus stuff, I decided to just go ahead and reinstall W2K. I'm prepared for this - I have a partition that has _nothing_ but W2K on it, and a little 64MB (yes, sixty-four megabytes) partition right at the boot sector. But still, Windoze is notorious for rewriting the MBR, so I'm a little worried - the FD is having problems (like, it won't boot off it), and I had to burn a CD to boot into Slackware Live - or at least, use its boot kernel, for after W2K trashes LILO.
So, I get all ready to reinstall, and when the setup disk says it's time to reboot, it booted, of all things, LILO! Windows reassigned all of my drives: What used to be "C:", the "BOOT" drive, became "F:," and "E:", where I had W2K, became "C:"; interestingly, "D:" was still "D:".
So I have a clean install, and LILO is still in place - W2K apparently didn't think it was important enough to bother with, or something. :-)
Oh, wait! Just before I start all that S/W install, I decided to rescue a couple of RAM modules from the MB of an office computer I had to fix. I now have 512 MB of RAM, thank you very much. But, while installing this "new" used RAM, I burned my finger on the CPU heat sink. WHAT??!?!? There's NO WAY a heatsink should be that hot. No wonder the computer's acting flaky! I powered it up, and the CPU fan didn't even turn.
So, I put the thing up on the bench, took the fan off the heatsink of the salvage unit, and went to slap it onto the top of the existing heat sink, and the screws weren't long enough - entirely different style of fan.
So I epoxied it. I also re-gooped the old heat sink (with the fan epoxied to it). The clip was a bitch to get loose.
Anyway, I've just reached in and felt my heatsink, and it's cool to the touch. :-) Please cue jokes now. ;-)
And, ironically, I was just looking at the old heatsink that I took the fan off, and it looks like it's exactly the same clip - I could have just swapped out the whole heatsink assembly. Oh, well, at least I have a working computer! :-)
Cheers! Rich