After months of saving up for parts, I am typing this from my rebuilt desktop instead of my laptop!
Still don't know quite what went wrong with it - it's a bit Ship of Theseus in there now, with a new hard drive, power stupply, motherboard and CPU. (Plus new RAM, because the old RAM would of course not fit in the shiny new motherboard. I feel vaguely guilty about wasting good RAM, but what can you do?)
Sadly, it looks like whatever happened has killed the E: drive, which his where I keep vids in progress :(. Lost my in-progress remakes of Brothers in Arms and Bicycle Race and will probably have to start over, although I do plan to try a few things and maybe consult an actual professional. Also, I have yet to figure out how to plug in the optical drive, as the motherboard says it has six SATA ports but ... doesn't? So the floor is still covered in cables and screwdrivers and the computer case is still open, but basically everything works.
Mostly I am happy that I will once again be able to vid and play games made during the last decade. Moreover, the new parts are a considerable upgrade over the old ones. (Which is part of why I waited instead of buying straight replacements.) Also, there is something uniquely satisfying about using a computer that you put together and/or fixed yourself.
Still don't know quite what went wrong with it - it's a bit Ship of Theseus in there now, with a new hard drive, power stupply, motherboard and CPU. (Plus new RAM, because the old RAM would of course not fit in the shiny new motherboard. I feel vaguely guilty about wasting good RAM, but what can you do?)
Sadly, it looks like whatever happened has killed the E: drive, which his where I keep vids in progress :(. Lost my in-progress remakes of Brothers in Arms and Bicycle Race and will probably have to start over, although I do plan to try a few things and maybe consult an actual professional. Also, I have yet to figure out how to plug in the optical drive, as the motherboard says it has six SATA ports but ... doesn't? So the floor is still covered in cables and screwdrivers and the computer case is still open, but basically everything works.
Mostly I am happy that I will once again be able to vid and play games made during the last decade. Moreover, the new parts are a considerable upgrade over the old ones. (Which is part of why I waited instead of buying straight replacements.) Also, there is something uniquely satisfying about using a computer that you put together and/or fixed yourself.