Whilst in Bristol last week my laptop died. Well, I say it died, it just switched itself off half way through synchronising itself with my network drive. It then began to reboot itself until the hard disk had enough and it froze. Then some weird message about ACPI conflicts and it hung. Battery out and restart, only for it to go through the routine again, with the hard disk pleading me to switch off and let it be. I then left it for the day and managed to get another hour or so out of it at home before it again went all rebooty.
Ahhh, I here you techno-literate ones say, it's that Sasser virus ain't it! Nope, clean as a whistle. So puzzled looks from all concerned.
Today I signed the death warrant, a form that allows our IT outsourcing to rebuild my machine by destorying everything on it and starting from scratch. Not a pleasant experience, nagging doubts in my mind as to whether I've managed to get all my data off it. But, as luck would have it, the rebuild didn't work because of an intermittent network connection. A quick wander around the office by the technician, trying a few more connections and hey-presto! The network connection on the mother board is dead. So a replacement motherboard and no loss of data. PHEW!!
So, is it a new machine, or my old machine with a new heart? Time will only tell...
Told ya ;)