Building things, because I want to see them work
My brother abandoned his old PC after taking the hard drives out. I let it sit around for months, waiting for him to reclaim it. After staring at it for roughly half a year, I decided he really was done with it, and started tinkering. He informed me that "It's a good computer". Knowing him to be well informed about computers, I figured it was a waste to have it just literally sitting around collecting dust.
First and foremost, it had a layer of dust so thick I could barely breathe. Cleaning must happen before anything. After giving the case and fans a solid once over, I tried booting it backup with a random drive I had laying around. It would power up for a few seconds, then shut down. Over and over. No bios or anything. The fans would spin and the LEDs would go off, but only for a few seconds, perhaps a minute. Then shutdown.
Continued Perils
I eventually got fed up with this uncalled for behavior and took everything completely apart. As much as I hate the idea of busting out the thermal paste, I went straight for the heart, without thinking. It probably didn't need new thermal paste, but it's a good practice since it had been quite some time since it was put together.
I thoroughly cleaned the CPU and heatsink until it looked as close to new as possible. I found actual leaves inside the case! I discovered some very fine scratches on the outside of the heatsink that were concerning to me at first, because it meant it wasn't absolutely perfect. After some brief research, I felt more confident that the tiny scratches wouldn't cause harm. So I grab my thermal paste I was absolutely sure I had enough of. Turns out, that shit dries out. LOL. Internal eyeroll commencing...
My lack of amusement at the dried out thermal paste turned into the PC sitting in parts on my desk for over a month.
Back to Action
Fast forward, new thermal paste in hand. I give everything another wipe down as dust may have settled. I reapply the thermal paste ever so evenly as I am inclined to do, taking like 10 minutes to make it perfect. I reseat the heatsink and reattach everything to the motherboard.
I take one more look at the case before I commit to placing my overly dramatic efforts into the case.
"It's still dirty" I told myself. I can't place my fresh clean motherboard into the wild west. I am telling you every crevice got a swab. I took a peak at the bottom just out of curiosity. Spider egg sack! AHhhH!!!!!! To be fair, my brother had been traveling with this PC in his RV, camping and stuff. So I suppose a critter or remnants isn't completely unexpected.
So anyways, all put back together I try to boot again. I can now see the BIOS! Wooooo! Success. It was at this moment I realized that the hard drive I put in the computer was not a bootable drive, but a backup drive I used for my macbook. That's so not going to work on so many levels...
Obtaining chosen OS
I did what any resourceful person would do and cloned the hard drive on my working PC. This is both a blessing and a curse. I used Macrium Reflect software this time around. Works well and yes I recommend. Super easy to use. I popped the drive in and just like magic, it boots into Windows. (I like Linux too, for simplicity let's continue.) However, there were setbacks. Let me break that down for you.
- When you clone a drive, it keeps the configurations of the current pc setup.
- Since I was using a completley different build, all the drivers and processes were a hot mess. I had to manually add most of the drivers.
- I had to delete many apps and folders because the computer I copied the drive from was more powerful.
- I couldn't connect my pc to wifi because: 1. The currently installed network card didn't have antenna attached 2. The hardrive was configured to a different network card.
My first thought about getting the driver was that I would put it on a usb and then load it onto the computer. Then I thought about how many trips up and down two flights of stairs may follow, and I cringed. I thought about how easy it would be if I just had a super long ethernet cable. I caved. I went to the store and got a super long CAT6 cable. This is not the first time I needed one and certainly wont be the last.
Mother of updates... hours.
Happily buzzing fans signaled certain success. Except, I still have a 150ft patch cord running though the house. Unsightly at best. About a day later I remembered that I had a brand new, completely dysfunctional ROG laptop in my closet. I bet that sucker has a network card in it still, I thought. Yes sir it did.
I must say, removing a crispy LCD screen by pulling the stretchy tag-tape off is indeed satisfying. I'm definitely going to find a use for that screen later. After removing some basic screws and detaching the screen, I carefully unseated the cozily tucked wires and copper stickers at the end. It was interesting to see how the entire back of the screen case was used as a giant antenna. Very amusing. Now that I have my very special network card in hand, I place it into the wifi m.2 slot on the motherboard.
You are probably wondering how this is gonna work. The answer is some fuzzy logic. I am taking a good network card from a gaming laptop, and placing it into a slightly aged PC. I figured a network card with the latest standards on it, and "some kind of" antenna on it might stand a chance. By being careful pulling the antenna out, I reused the sticky copper sheets on the ends to attach them to the back of the computer case.
I get like half a signal this way, but its technically an improvement, and I was excited my idea worked. I am able to watch Youtube and make dev posts with this latest version of franken-wifi.
Ill figure that one fan out later. Bedtime. XD
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