Diary of a Wolfeman

Some good news discovered whilst tripping through the local game store: Space Empires V is available at your local store. I could have sworn I signed up for the notifier, but I didn’t get anything.

Anyway, I happily dumped cash on the counter and took a copy of this awaited favorite sequel, and installed it on the work laptop as a test-run. Very pretty, and especially nice in the wide-screen, which is different. You can move all the sub-windows around to maximize use of the whole screen.

When I got home today, I went to install it under Vista, but Vista wouldn’t even start the installer. No idea why, it just balked completely to do anything with it. Now, the Vista install was merely a test platform from the get-go, so I had no qualms at all about shutting it down and booting back to my old XP install. With one minor problem, that I did not see coming.

You see, in the Vista Start menu, there is an icon with a rendition of the standard line-in-a-broken-circle “Power” icon. This is actually the Hibernate button, not the shutdown button. The system went dark, yes, but then my keyboard lit back up, something it had not done before. I shrugged, turned off the power switch at the power supply, plugged the IDE drive back in, hit the switch again and then pressed the power button.

Nothing. No lights, no fan spin, no response.

A wail of anguish split the clammy afternoon air across the town.

Further troubleshooting tells me it’s either the processor or the motherboard, most likely the latter. (When the proc goes, the motherboard will at least beep at you; I get nothing.) An email has been sent to the mobo manufacturer, as the system is less than a year old and should be under warranty. (I is a smart monkey and kept the receipt.) Hopefully they won’t send me through too many hoops before authorizing an RMA.

I will probably be relegated to the laptop for about two weeks if they have any decency, three if they don’t and I end up having to purchase a replacement – from a competitor. All in all, I really shouldn’t be that surprised, as the on-board NIC failed about two months into use, and the northbridge fan has been making noise this last week or so.

Yep – another beautiful Sunday at Chez Wolfe.