The haunted PC

Posted October 31, 2008 at 10:44 AM by Shawn Ingram

Section: Computers

Since it is Halloween, Gadgetell is taking a look at some the tech horror stories our writers have experienced.  Here is one tale.

In my house, we usually built our own computers; we had, at most, two computers that were purchased pre-built.  The second computer we built did everything it was supposed to.  It connected to the Internet and could be used to write school reports on.  Not to mention it handled “Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” almost perfectly (if you were willing to take away some of the draw distance).   The computer had many hours logged into it, the hard drive was maybe three quarters filled.  Oblivion and Civilization IV took care of most of that for me.  My brother used it to go online, and my grandmother used it every hour we weren’t there to play her casino games.  It had served us well. 

That was until the one morning when we awoke to something we were quite used to.

I went to turn on the computer.  I turned on the monitor, pressed the power button and nothing.  Okay, that didn’t seem abnormal.  Next, I unplugged the power supply, plugged it back in after a few seconds, and the screen still showed nothing. 

I could hear the processor’s fan running, everything seemed fine, it just wasn’t working.  I took note of it, and told my father of it later.  I told him we probably needed a new power supply.  For some reason, each of our computers went through about two or three power supplies before it was retired.

So my father came over with the new power supply a day or two later.  He had become a pro at this and replaced it within a few minutes.  Turned on the computer, same thing.  The monitor displayed nothing.  We were puzzled, but thought maybe the graphics card had gone bad. 

Coincidentally, my father had an Nvidia 8800 in his car that he was going to put into his next PC.  He brought it in, replaced the 8600 that was in the machine, and tried it.  Still, the computer displayed black.

A week had passed before we tried it again.  I had resorted to using the Internet at school despite its slower connection.  It was still something.  Though I was missing my Kajiit and the land of Cyrodiil.  I was beginning to wonder when I would have a PC of my own again.

When we tried again we took out our old PC and tested the monitor.  The old eMachine displayed on the monitor, so that possibility was out.  We took out the RAM and replaced it thinking it was a long shot, but it still didn’t work.

My father took the PC to his house to fix it.  He replaced the hard drive, DVD drive, processor and motherboard and brought it back.  We put it back on the desk in the kitchen plugged everything in and turned it on.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  We had replaced the entire machine aside from the case and still nothing worked.

There was only one option: the case must be the problem.  We consulted with every other computer person we knew, and nobody had heard of such a thing.  It has since been forgotten in a garage, moved to a basement and gutted.  Sometimes we try to revive it only to realize that the case simply does not want to be used anymore.  It may have gone into one too many Oblivion gates.