Back in the middle of September, I wrote about faulty products and customer service and followed it up with a short story about the installation problems I had with my CoolerMaster power supply. After another six weeks, I’m happy to report that I finally have a working desktop again!

Thankfully the replacement for the dead on arrival power supply only took two weeks to arrive and not 5-6 like the original replacement. Unfortunately, after plugging everything back together I received a different but equally high pitched squeal from my computer. Taking my computer to pieces component by component, it ended up being the Asus video card. It turns out that when I plugged in the faulty power supply, it some how damaged the video card.

A trip back to the computer shop to have it replaced, approximately a month in waiting and I have it back in my hot little hands. Excited that I might be getting my main computer back, I leave work a little early to go and pick it up and get home to have the same thing go wrong. To rule out something else on my end, I ask Jacob to check it on his home machine and he had the same thing happen.

First thing on Saturday morning I go back to the computer shop and tell them that the repair work wasn’t successful and ask them to expedite the replacement and they were more than happy to help me out. Just as I was about to pull into the garage, I get a phone call from the computer shop telling me that they’ve just put the video card in two different machines and it worked without fault. I was actually in disbelief but relieved at the same time – so i immediately returned to the stop to collect the video card.

Saturday afternoon, i disassembled my machine again and after putting it all back together – as certain that the sun will rise tomorrow – the video card worked without fault. A little bit of fiddling later and I had all of the computer back together and in working order again.

It was great to have the laptop available across the last few months but I’m very happy to have my main computer back as I was really beginning to miss the speed and screen real estate. Next time when I put my computer back together, I’ll be sure to be a little more thorough as it was clearly a case of PEBKAC when the video card was returned to me.