Recovering from motherboard failures, and clean computing

[ Thanks to Bob_Robertson for this link.
]

“Recovering from motherboard failures, and clean
computing

“When last we left the scene, one server was dead, the desktop
dieing. However, ordering two new motherboards was successful. They
arrived from Magic Micro quickly and in good order, and it was time
to clean things up and make two working machines.

“First, a note on cleaning. I am sick (and tired) of computer
hardware that cannot be cleaned. Laptops that require being sent
back to the manufacturers in order to be cleaned, things like that.
I remember one call to Circuit City for a Sony Vaio laptop I owned,
where the person who answered the phone simply did not understand
what I meant when I said the fan needed to be cleaned.

“I had to let her go to her script and answer the question “Is
the machine overheating and shutting down?” with “Yes”, because if
I didn’t say “yes” she didn’t have any option for having me send it
in for cleaning at all. So they did the cleaning, and wiped Linux,
but I’ve learned always to do a full backup before letting anyone
else even touch my machines.”

Complete Story