This wild ride I've been on could have been a lot worse. Enter... my personal nightmare...
As you may know, I've put together the coputer I've always wanted. AMD Athlon 64 Processor ~2.2 GHz, 200 GB hdd, a GB of memory, nVidia 6600 video board, Creative Labs 7.1 Audio, the works! Very well advanced features, and I nearly lost it.
I kicked my front USB connection one day not too long ago. Unbeknown to me, I stripped the USB port. Well, my dad tried to fix it, and I plugged in my game pad. I leave for about 5 minutes, and when I get back, my monitor is in power saving mode. I look down inside the transparent cover of my box, and see something you don't want to see unless you are in welding - an arc-flash. I quickly hit the power on my Surge protector.
My power supply had a blown fuse, the motherboard was history, but ironically, the fragile CPU was unharmed. Well, I bought a box that shows readouts of fan speeds (user-adjustable from the side of the box) temperature, etc. I got the $300 motherboard replaced under warranty. Only my internet connection, a total pain in the rear, needs to be set up. And it isn't cooperating. Maybe it's fried. That won't take long to diagnose, but still, it's not fun...
If I hadn't gotten into my room, it could have beena lot worse. I'm pretty much posting this as a warning to anone who tries to repair connections that were stripped: Don't do it. I had the foresight to get a warranty, but if I hadn't, the price of repair would have been jacked up three-fold. The box was $100. The motherboard would have been $300. The CPU, had it blown, would have cost another $269. I was lucky. It's not something I want to count on.
It can happen to you. Beware of stripped connections.
