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Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Computers and Cats

When Gracie wants my attention if I'm sitting at the computer, she parks herself on the desk right in front of me, blocking my view of the monitor.

Over the past few months, my desktop computer has experienced seizures with increasing freqency. The mouse pointer wouldn't move, and the keyboard wouldn't respond. Pressing the Reset button to restart the computer was the only solution. DH the Engineer jumped through hoops trying to find a software problem that would explain the freezes. Installed all new drivers for everything that needs drivers. Replaced the BIOS (you don't want to know - it's the lowest level of software/firmware in the machine). No luck.

The next step (before outright replacing the computer's motherboard, which can get almost as expensive as a new computer, since Microsoft wants you to pay for a new Windows licence), was to test all the hardware. So out to the workshop went the computer. The first thing DH noticed after opening up the case was that the whole thing was filled with cat hair and dust. After about 20 minutes' work with a high-pressure air gun, the computer was cleaned out, and all the cabling reconnected. Hasn't crashed once since then.

Don't tell Gracie - no cat needs or deserves an increase in his/her sense of empowerment!

4 comments:

neki desu said...

lolol!interesting tip that of an air gun.might save a lot of replacements.

Cate Rose said...

Hilarious tale! Glad the computer works again. BeeGee says, "Hey Gracie, way to go!"

Alice said...

I don't have cats -- but a friend of mine had the exact same experience. This was in the early days of early personal computing. It was an Apple II+, and his cat slept on top of the monitor. Some things never change!

Peg Cherre said...

I got quite a chuckle out of this one. Cats....you gotta love them. ^-^