PC is now Dead!

my new  gaming pc that is 4 months old i s now officially dead. I was using it yesterday ( think i was working on a page) , walked away from pc for about 10 minutes and came back to a screen full of garbage. could not esc out. left it on there for jerry to see. even after rebooting same thing appeared. attached pc to old fashioned monitor and still nothing.

today jerry reseated video card - no difference and this time when trying to boot up after the fans turned on  there was none of the robooting beeps - they were there yesterday thus  pc is even worse today.

my lcd monitor also died - this was about 5-6 years old - i expect the 2 are related to each other but there is no way to prove it. I have been wanting to get a larger monitor but did not want to rush into getting one.


jerry called DS this morning and eventually we got them to agree to a refund but i will be subjected to a 15% restocking fee  plus have to pay for shipping. the only way not to pay the restocking fee is if they can reproduce the same porblems and I don't see that happening.  so  I will be out around $400 or to look at it another way it was a rental pc for $100/mo for 4 months.

even if this problem could be fixed something else will bound to happen. there have been porblems since day 1 with it.  the pc has been sent back to DS twice for repairs. no matter what fix is done including ones over the phone, it helps for a couple  of days and then it gets worse again.


so where does that leave me now. My old pc which  is about 5 years old is running on an ancient monitor (non lcd 1600 x 1200 - this was considered huge when i got it, lol)which is causing graphics  to be squashed and look lopsided. even if i adjust the resolution it still doesn't help that much. even more important , my pse 5 program has stopped working fully - i can load , save and do very basic things but there is NO layer masks, effects, drop shadows and more stuff like that. i have tried rebuilding the database but  it  doesn't make any difference. I have long since used up all the pse and PS demos. i am going to download pse 10 demo and I hope that will work so i can at least try to do some scrapping but with the lopsided graphics not sure how well that will turn out. also the audio is completely gone on the pc - so no skyping, no videos, etc.

I am trying to learn dsa2 - everyone says it is easier than pse but to me it seems ten times harder. the way they do layers is what makes it so hard and if u don't convert store bought kits to their format it is not very user friendly. and all the tutorials are video based and with no audio can't watch any more.

plan to go to costco tomorrow to get a new monitor - they have a 27 inch samsung on sale have no idea how good it is but at least costco has a generous return policy. so if i get that ,it should resolve the squashing graphics issues.

the biggest thing is what do I do about a new pc. costoc's pc's are no good as they are way too low end. does jerry build one himself? do we go to a local store and get one built? decisions decisions?

in the meantime once again i am falling so far behind in all my ct commitments. the few days i had the pc i was trying to catch up from when it was in the shop  last week and now again i am going to be lagging. so to any designers I am working with if  you are reading this, i understand if  you cannot keep me on your team and you feel i should resign