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 )