Sorry if this goes against board code, but I was talking to quite a few people from the boards off the boards (mostly via email) and I am inable to do so now, nor can I follow up on topics so I thought I would give a courtesy topic to let everyone know whats up.

About a week ago I experienced what could be described as massive simultaneous computer hardware failure. It appears to be caused by a surge, I am assuming from the thunder storms we have been having, that got through my surge protection due to carelessness. Overweighted plugs from my computer caused the strip to tilt and the circut breaker button on the side of my strip to rest on the floor inabling its ability to eject itself if the load became too much.

After extensive inspection of every part, and finding no physical damage, I went to work on the intangible portion of the computer. First thing I did was flash the bios, which did nothing. Went on to format and reinstal windows. Same problem. Tried as much of the hardware as I could by removing piece by piece; still no luck. The symptoms are quite odd, as many are graphical related, yet they are not permanent or constant. DOS also trips out and prints random symbols all across the screen. Explorer (and that is Windows' main process not Internet Explorer) stops responding if I go beyond the 16 bit color range. I am litterly flying solo on the bare essentials.

It's a little past 4 am, so I am going to try to get some sleep. I just wanted to let everyone know since I can't contact them through my email right now. I will try to get back up and running again, but I don't know how long that will take.

So to everyone I was talking to, especially foogoo and all those in the thread about the ranch, I am still here just struggling to do so. By the way foogoo, the shoot we were planning on should still be sound and I should have my 1911. My computer should be up before then though, so we can plan on the details when I get it up and running.

If anyone needs to contact me, you can do so through my web based email [email protected]. Take care everyone, and hope to be back soon.

ETA: to give you an idea of what I am dealing with. I had to uninstall my graphics card in order to make Windows stable enough to get online, but it gives you an idea.

Good luck, let us know if there's anything that can be done to help.

I finally "fixed" the problem. A failing hard drive and corrupt video memory was the cause of it. Most likely the hard drive was due to age/use and the video problem was caused by the power surge.

Reformated the hard drive, so it's ok...for now.

Borrowed a video card from my brother so I am ok for general tasks.

I should be ok until I can save enough for a new computer. Either way, I can come back to arfcom and also look for localdeals online