Hello again, On Friday 04 February 2005 10:26, Randall R Schulz wrote:
G,
You need to pay more attention to the warning signs your computer is giving you. It's (mostly) an electronic device. Odd noises--screeches and clicks, e.g.--are never normal. Had you paid attention earlier, you probably could have saved yourself considerable grief.
I had an interesting experience a couple of weeks back. As I sat working at my computer I occassionally heard a very faint, raspy screeching kind of sound. It was hard to localize, but was not coming from any of the computer components. When I tracked it down, it turned out the plug for the outlet strip had fallen most of the way out of the wall socket and was apparently arcing. All the computer system components drew power through that outlet strip but none of them were malfunctioning, as far as I could tell. I assume that had I not caught it when I did, the plug would have fallen the rest of the way out and at least caused a power failure (I don't have a UPS). It's also possible the power could have become intermittent, which can be pretty bad for electronic devices. I guess I'm lucky it happened while I was around to notice it (the system runs 24/7). Randall Schulz