Now To "Dry Out"

We have just farewelled friends Janet and Michael as they head down to the Gold Coast to complete their holiday trip.  They will return to their home at Newcastle later in the week.  As usual it was great having them for a visit.  Everyone has over eaten and had too much to drink.  It was all great fun!

On Friday Michael and I joined forces to put a brew on and it is bubbling away in the garage as I type.  We ate at home for two evening meals and then last night ventured to the Caloundra Surf Club at King's Beach for a couple of pre-dinner drinks and then our little Chinese for our meal.

Saturday morning they headed to the Eumundi Market while I went to Computer Club and Trish caught her breath and rested up at home.

Michael now knows a lot more about AFL footy but I guess if you visit our home during the footy season everyone will catch a match or two on TV here.

Today will be an AFD (Alcohol Free Day).

Michael and I enjoyed lots of chats about Technology, the media player, our phones and computers.

The old computer continues to cause problems but they now may well be solved.  Sometimes it would take a while to start up, other times it wouldn't start at all but the most common fault was the PC would start but there wouldn't be any signal going to the monitor.  It would be blank.  Then the next time you start it up the whole computer would start perfectly.

I would pull out and clean up the RAM or I would jiggle the video card (see photo left).  Then after a restart it could work fine again.  Yesterday I became more adventurous and actually removed the video card, cleaned the connectors up and re installed it.  Still the PC would start up but there was nothing on the monitor.

I tried another monitor and it still wouldn't go.  The video card has its own connectors for the monitor.  There is another monitor connection on the PC's mother board.  When I connected the monitor to the mother board VGA connector at least I got a picture but the color was all wrong.

A computer will work OK without a video card, it then uses the less powerful motherboard monitor connection.  I removed the video card, connected the monitor via the motherboard connection and Bingo, everything works perfectly!  It appears there may be something wrong with the video card or its drivers.  There was a conflict somewhere and by removing the video card I have removed the conflict.

It now starts quickly and perfectly and everything works fine.