There was a delay in getting part III of this mind numbing series out due to certain unforeseen circumstances which I’m not going to tell you about. Some things just shouldn’t be mentioned online.

Sounds good doesn’t it?

Due to the above mentioned delay I have decided to sum up what happened after evicting all the illegitimate life forms from the inside of my wife’s computer with a few short blasts from the old air compressor. Wisely, I had turned off the inline tool oiler before doing this as I knew from previous experience that air tool lubricating oil does not make one’s PC run faster despite what some might believe.

The final chore was to remove the cooling fan from the processor’s heat sink and deal with whatever was growing underneath. And “growing”, I found, was the proper word for it.

There, lying on top of the processor’s heat sink, was a living sheet combined of a layer of coagulated dust and dirt with a microcosm of living microorganisms living within. I donned my latex gloves and carefully removed this layer from the heat sink like an archeologist removing the ages long debris from a fabulous new find. Then, remembering my high school biology, placed this in small, sterilized jar as I didn’t have a spare Petri dish lying around, and sent it off to one of the more famous biological laboratories just in case there was some new fabulous form of life or perhaps a cure for swine flu lying within.

A couple of quick spurts of air to clear out the vanes of heat sink and I was done.

Back upstairs I went about the back wrenching process of lying on the floor, reconnecting all the myriads of wires and cables into the back of computer and then shoving it into the bottom recesses of the computer desk where it lived. Standing well back and poking at the power button button with the pointy end of an old pool cue, I switched it on. After the smoke cleared I was ready to reload my lady’s computer with fresh install of Windows.

The reloading of her computer is a terribly boring tale when compared to actual cleaning of the thing so I’ve decided not to bore my readers with  the telling of it. Load CD/DVD and wait awhile, load other CD/DVD and wait awhile longer, begin download of 3542 updates and go have lunch while waiting about sums it up nicely.

It had been a long time since I had reloaded a custom built job but since my wife tends to be a very logical and wise creature, she had saved everything from the initial building of her machine all packaged and boxed up the way it should be—but rarely is. This made the process so much easier. The only thing left in the old Device Manager that had an exclamation mark attached to it was some sort of vague, unfathomable communication device.

I just told Windows to go online and fix the damn thing and surprisingly enough, it did.

Now, after hooking in the external drive and letting my favorite girl put everything back where it belonged (never try to put your wife’s desktop, virtual or otherwise, back in order especially when it’s one of those organized messes that only she can understand), the old machine is happily running along like nothing ever happened with the small exception that it’s a hell of a lot cooler now and faster since all the OS garbage that had been accumulating over the past 6 years had now been vanquished.

Considering that security updates for Windows XP-anything cease once and for all in 2014 it looks like I won’t have to wait another 6 years before this happens again. With any luck we’ll both have shiny new machines within the next two years anyway.

Hmmm, now that I think of it, my old PC hasn’t been cleaned since I first bought it about 5 years ago. Oh well,  once more unto the breech my friends?

In our last episode, the hero, (meaning me) after being dived bombed by a previously unknown alien life form that had been dwelling within the unclean recesses of a dead PC, had just lowered his cardboard shield and fishing net in preparation for his first peek into the guts of his wife’s computer. We pick up the story from there.

As I’m sure anyone who’s ever opened up the chassis of a personal computer that hadn’t been cleaned in the better part of a decade would know, it’s not often a pretty sight. And the one I was timidly peering into was no exception.

Instead of finding this:

I found this:

I knew then that without a doubt I had my job cut out for me. On that thought I went off to the kitchen to fetch myself a sharp knife. I knew I’d need it just to cut through the initial layer.

After cutting through the first layer of semi-organic gauze consisting of dust, cobwebs, cat hair and any other sort of material that usually wafts it’s way across any normal household floor and into the front intakes of a mid-tower PC, I could finally make out the various pieces/parts that one would normally find inside a box like this. This achievement still didn’t make things look any prettier than they did before though. And attempting to remove the rest of the dirt, dust and what-have-you’s that normally don’t belong in a PC such as this would only waste precious man-hours and possibly put lives at risk—meaning mine. This left me with only one option left.

I strode across the basement floor and after turning my face away to avoid any possible flying shrapnel, drove the power handle to the old 2 cylinder air compressor into the “Closed” position. After several reluctant turns of the drive motor, a protesting screech from the belt and a shower of electrical sparks the old compressor was chugging along quite nicely. And as it takes awhile these days for the old contraption to hit 150 lbs of air pressure I retired to the kitchen once again to make myself a nice cup of tea.

I figured a cup of tea, a buttered scone and a couple of good blasts of air would easily eliminate half of my cleaning time.

Stay tuned for Part III (don’t you just hate this?)

If you happen to recall, my wife’s trusty old custom built PC had a stroke the other day and never recovered. Or to be more specific, the original 6 year old load of XP Pro, in spite of regular daily cleaning and defragging, finally bit the big one. Lucky for us we had recently purchased an external hard drive with gobs of space in which we shoveled a recent back up of both our computers. Yay for us. We should have done it sooner I know but it was done in time nonetheless.

It’s been a long time since I reloaded a custom job but since it was my lady who built the thing in the first place I could pretty much rest assured that everything was done properly with all original drivers and such thoughtfully tucked away somewhere. I was not disappointed.

It also needed cleaning…badly.

So, armed with the box that the original motherboard came in crammed full of CDs of original mobo drivers (“I got my mobo drivin’…”), back up external drive, static strap, metal handled camel hair brush, hammer, chisel, pry bar, filter mask, a bit of C4, mini arc welder and goggles I got to work.

I have to give her credit for ordering quality parts as I absolutely despise cheap computer cases and I was pleasantly surprised that this one was not of that kind. Sliding off the top the sides were easily lifted out. I shined my high powered flashlight into the depths.

Something flew out and became entangled in my hair.

After much running around, batting at my head and a bit of constructive screaming the thing in my hair obviously became annoyed at all the commotion and flew off into the darker recesses of the basement. I still don’t know what it was.

Hope it doesn’t breed.

I went and got my fishing net just in case there was another one in there. I should have though of that earlier.

Shining the light back into the box while shielding my face with a piece of cardboard and keeping the fish net at the ready, I kept the interior lit for a good 5 minutes before I was satisfied that all things with wings had already been flushed out or withered by the mighty photon force of my flashlight. Carefully then I put down my shield and net and peeked inside…

…I did not like what I saw.

Stay tuned for part II (Yeah, I’m gonna have fun with this )