Its rare to find a PC with multiple hardware problems, but this one is probably the worst I’ve seen.

Since the PC was kept in an air conditioned office, it was probably kept at a constant temperature, which helped mask many problems.

At first, the PC just wouldn’t start.

Push the power button, and nothing happened.

I replace the power supply, but while I’m changing the PSU, I notice that the video card has got some strange black marks on it…

It turns out that the video card had a burned out fan… literally burned! I don’t know if the burn marks are from friction, or from a short within the motor itself, but it might have been the cause of the power supply failure.

Anyway, I replace the video card, and then go to start the PC.

This time, it springs into life, and after the BIOS screen, It starts to load Windows XP…

And then I get a blue screen of death (BSOD). the error is stop 0x0000007b INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

This means that there is a hardware problem with the hard drive!

I then take it back to the office, and a SMART test shows that it doesn’t have much life left.

I quickly decide to mirror it to a new Seagate SATA drive.

Luckily, the drive is not badly damaged, so the mirror process works correctly.

Now, I just let the system install the hard drive and video drivers, and its finally back to normal.