Tech: Doing it the Hard Way

My primary computer is a laptop whose video card has been fried from one-too-many sessions of "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic." The laptop itself still works fine, except that now, about ten to fifteen minutes into playing a game, it overheats and shuts off. Having a decent amount of free time over the summer semester (we get essentially four days off in a row), I wanted to play "World of Warcraft," but my video card wouldn't cooperate. Bollocks.

So I dug out my old laptop. I mothballed it about a year ago, since the screen hinge is broken and the laptop itself is kinda grungy. It's still plenty powerful enough for WoW - a desktop Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, Mobility Radeon 9000. So, I dust it off and boot up - and the backlight is gone. Bollocks.

After finagling with the on-off switch in the hinge, I manage to get the backlight back - whew. I pop in the WoW install CD and wait for the AutoPlay splash screen. Nothing happens. Looks like the CD-ROM is busted. Bollocks.

At this point, I could open up the computer to check the cable, and also double-check the IDE settings of the drive. But, there's a good chance the drive itself is buggered, which means all that effort would be in vain anyway. So, I'm now downloading all 3 gigabytes of the program, to be followed by several more gigs of patches and installations. All before actually playing the game.

I hope this laptop's 3D card still works. :-P