Source Guru

Yes, that toything. Hehe.

Ok, so after one of my Flatmates decided to tread on my wireless dongle (which I had trailing on a long USB cable down the stairs outside my room so I could actually pick up the signal!) and break it, I haven’t used my Desktop machine in a good few months. It was pretty much of a case of without internet access, it was pretty useless other than for watching DVDs on (which is when I’d boot it up) – so I used my eeePC instead.

Anyway, I went out and bought a nice new PCI Wireless card today – no chance of it being trodden on. And I got a nice one with 2 aerials, for connectivity purposes (and I can say – it’s boosted my signal from what was on average 15% on the wireless dongle to on average 65%!)

I’m happy and actually surprised that Ubuntu picked it up straight away, and even used the settings from my old Wireless dongle to connect straight away!

Anyway, after a while, I hardlocked…. I hate hardlocking… tis so annoying. So I rebooted into the Hardy Installer CD (This still has Gutsy on) and tried an install… Another hardlock…

Uh-Oh I thought …. and ran memtest86+ – no problems… Try again.. another hardlock.

Ok, reopen PC to see if wiggling the wires does something…. OW! I burnt my hand…

My PC was seriously overheating.. So – I had a look – MY PSU and CPU fans were clogged up with orange dust. :’( damnit.

So I took a walk down to Maplin and went and got myself some compressed air… Something I’d learnt from my IT Technician days was a godsend for cleaning CPU Fans.

Anyway, My PC is now sparkly and shiny inside, and on a plus, I’ve gotten rid of the annoying rattle it’s had for the past year… I thought it was the CD drive… as it would always stop when I whacked the CD drive (another trick I learnt as an IT Technician!)

So yeah – I’d suggest that any geek out there goes and invests in a can of compressed air (or ‘airduster‘ as it seems to be branded these days) – It is the magic computer fixing tool… if it can’t be fixed with compressed air, (and/or wiggling the cables) you might as well replace it – it’ll save you time and stop you banging your head against the wall

I just wish I’d thought and taken photos of how dusty it was (It was orange dust too – which was strange… I think the dust puppy’s are becoming Ubuntu themed)

Hehe. As I’m moving soon, and I’m only going to have wireless internet, I thought I’d sit down and have a look to see whether the D-Link USB adapter I’ve had for about 2 years would actually work with Linux, which, while it had previously picked up details of the networks, never seemed to work.

After reading through a couple of Ubuntu Wiki Pages, I managed to download, compile and install the working module – and guess what – it works!

Now this is great news – I won’t have to go out and search for a new Wireless Dongle/Card, and well – seeing as the end of my ethernet cable is missing the clip, and keeps falling out of the router, I can now use wireless! woohoo! (and it’s even working with WPA!)

Oh, and hello Planet #bitfolk