The first of the year was a rather busy time for me and so I wasn’t able to devote my full attention to the task. We had moved our business to a new location at the end of November and there were some minor issues that needed to be resolved on a daily basis related to the move. During the month of December I was focused on installing and configuring a new accounting system that was to be in place by the first of January. All of this while trying to keep the business running and taking care of the normal day to day tasks.

I would spend a few minutes having the machine boot to the CD and get called away for something that was more important. Two hours later I would have to start the whole process over because I would come back in the server room and the machine would be off. Finally this last week I took the machine off the rack to find out what the problem was. It had gotten to the point that I could power the machine on and nothing would happen. No boot screen would show up and no sign of life.

When I removed the cover to the machine and turned it on it was easy to spot the problem. The fan for the CPU was not turning at all. I turned the machine off and removed the fan to find a processor that was covered with a brown film. It seems that one of my attempts to reload the operating system on the machine had failed and the machine was left running. The CPU fan had failed somewhere in this process and the grease that is used to dissipate the heat from the CPU to the heat sink had cooked to a nice brown color. Heat and CPUs do not mix well so the CPU and the fan had to be replaced.

After the CPU and fan had been replaced I turned the machine on and was able to boot to the CD to begin loading the operating system. I finished the installation and installed the remote access software so that I would be able to work with the machine from the house. At this point I have a machine that has the operating system software and remote access software and nothing else but I am ready to head for the house and get some supper and continue the process from the easy chair in my living room while I watch the Spurs game. About eight that evening I try connecting to the new machine and am unable to so I move on to other things and make a mental note to look into the problem in the morning.

The next morning after opening up I go to my machine to find out why I could not connect. I find that it has been powered off. It is still sitting on the work bench so I figure that it had been turned off by a power outage. At this point I think that I am finished with my problem with this machine and I move it back to the server room on the rack so that I can download and install the updates from there. I get everything plugged in and push the power button and nothing happens. There is nothing that could have happened to the machine in the five minutes that it took me to move from the work bench to the server room so I pull the cover off the machine while it is on the rack to be sure that something has not popped loose in the walk. I hit the power button again and still nothing. I reach into the machine to feel the CPU fan and heat sink to be sure that there is not a problem with the last item that I was working with. As I press on the fan the machine comes on. This is not a good sign since this is what the power button is for so I immediately pull the power plug on the machine and pull it off the rack to take a closer look at it.

It seems that the power supply was having problems as well and needed to be replaced. I would assume at this point that the power supply had been the root of my problem and the CPU fan had been a symptom or result of that issue. There were no noises coming from either of the fans that alerted me to the problem. It was a coincidence that the hardware issues occurred during the same time frame of the software issue that I was experiencing and the move to the new building. Either way the problem has been resolved, the software installed and updated and the machine is back in service.

It has been an eventful three months that I would not wish on my worst enemy but I made it thru and was able to ventilate with you after the fact. This has been a very therapeutic session but our space is up for this month so I must go for now.