Invisible wrote:
> Ah yes, no Monday morning would be complete without me crawling around 
> the lab floor trying to fix obscure PC problems. :-}

Obscure recurring problems.

> Today, a PC wouldn't boot (or even POST). On Friday it was fine, today 
> it won't work. The PSU is really very warm indeed. Turned it off, blew 
> some dust out of it, let it cool for a while. Now it works fine. GO FIGURE.

...and then it failed again. Once again the PSU feels much too hot. So I 
replaced it.


cardboard box with a plain steel lump inside that has half a dozen 
cables dangling off it.


each. And for that, you get a nicely printed box with a *shiny* metal 
lump inside. It's metalic black (if that makes any sense at all) and has 
a high-gloss finish. I can practically see my reflection in it! And on 
the top it has a beautifully printed spec sheet with the company logo 
next to it. And it claims to be "ultra-low noise". Well, in our lab, 
that's kind of unimportant. (Recall that I measured sound levels of 80 
dB and more in there!)

I wonder if it'll fix the problem though? Maybe the fan on the other one 
just isn't spinning right any more or something? We'll see...

> I need a vacuum cleaner...

This turns out to be rather harder than you might imagine. You'd think 
somebody somewhere would make a vacuum device especially for cleaning 
the inside of PCs... but no. I found no end of USB-powered keyboard 
vacuums, but that's it. I also found several portable car or household 
cleaners, but they're not specifically designed for computers. Oh, and 

so it has a high-quality filter on it.

Hmm, oh well!

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