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It was my worst fear come true! Before breakfast this morning I wandered into the "Office", turned all the power on, pressed the "Power" button on the front of the computer, the red light came on and whirled away for 5 seconds and then ..... NOTHING! I tried several more times, all with the same result! I had refrained from buying a new PC after the 3 year warranty period finished on this old one because it was running so well! My ghosts were now coming back to haunt me.

I jumped on the laptop and checked out the prices of 'new' towers at a couple of the larger retailers around here and got the best deal I could see.

Saturday is Computer Club day so I went along but this time I was going to be asking a few questions. One of the repair guys there said to take the cover off the side of the computer, take out the two 1GB ram cards and give the contacts a good clean by using a 'white lead pencil rubber'. Put them back in and see how you go.

The Ram cards are the 2 vertical long green colored things you can see in the photo. They have a white clip on either end to lock them tightly into place. In the photo one of the top white clips isn't fully in place. It took a couple of attempts and I eventually did it and got both cards going again. I was relieved (but a little disappointed) the PC fired up and was working fine again.

The first thing I did was a full back up onto my external drives! Because I had been a bit busy (and lazy), I hadn't backed up since before we went to Melbourne mid December last year.

Now Trish repairs cars and I can repair both dishwashers and computers! I was very proud of myself. Ordinarily it would be a trip to the PC Repair shop, a $100 bill and I would be computer-less for several days.

However I think the writing is on the wall for this PC. My PC works quite hard and is used almost everyday and for much of the day. I will begin to see what is available and look to update it.

Most likely the computer problems were exacerbated by the current humid weather. Some moisture may have got into the connections to cause the contacts to fail. Right now it is raining again and we have been told that some areas north of Brisbane may expect falls up to 200mls.