I resumed work today to find that my Pc wouldn’t stay on for more than a few minutes, after which it would just freeze. At first I started blaming windows again, and I decided to reinstall the OS (I didnt have any apps on the PC yet, anyway). The install process froze at the filecopy stage (deja-vu, the Windows XP bluescreen post!)
In a rage, I took apart the chassis, intending to remove the offending - or so i thought - harddisk, only to smell burnt-plastic near the processor. The processor isn’t plastic, is it? And the heatsink is made of metal (duh!), so i took a look at the fan. Sure enough, it was the culprit. It had either malfunctioned and got overheated, or something else. I put on the PC again, this time with the cover open,