As for our computers it is bad news.
We took them to a shop that we found out looks at them for free. The guy opened them up and said WOW, that one's really dead. The other one had the same death sentence it just was not as far along in the process.
Turns out that we have a problem with our power (not the power supply but the power coming into the house). It doesnt stay constant. So this caused trouble with some little cylinder shaped thingies on the motherboard which were oozing out crud..about six of them on one computer and a few on the other. The worse computer (the one with only BIOS) was hooked into an outlet that not only gets the strange power but is on a breaker that often flips when we use too many things in the kitchen. The other one that was not as bad (and is the one that still brings up windows though it has a shutting down problem) still has to contend with our strange power flow into the house. I have suspected our power for quite some time now because of our florescent lights dont last and they do crazy things and our power is always flickering or just going out for a minute or going off and back on as if someone is working on the lines. However I never knew it could affect the computers. We have them on surge protectors. The guy chuckled and said the surge protectors wouldnt help. He suggested this battery thing that regulates the power coming to the computer and prevents the shutdown when the breaker flips. I'm sure he is right about this problem because we do have wierd power and both computers had the same problems and are similar ages (2004) only the one on the bad breaker is worse off but used to act like the other one is right now. Death is impending. The one that still works also has a heat issue but we didnt know why because the fan goes like crazy. But, hehe..turns out its fan was filled with a very thick layer of dust so the fan would never cool it. And I mean THICK...shockingly so.
I guess we should buy this battery/power controller thing though. It is $50. And some canned air, lol.
Thanks for your willingness to help!
