Don’t Pay, Go home and Play!
So I brought my computer over to the shop. He opened it up, plugged it in, and it came right up. I was telling him that it was either the mobo or the power supply unit, but he told me that they looked fine.
I didn’t have a 80 pin IDE cable, so I got one of those off him, he also told me to put my hard drives on seperate channels… He said “Don’t pay, go home and play”…
I guess I’ll start playing now.
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Shop sounded helpful - why not give them a free bit of advertising by telling us all where it is?
Don’t remember the place… tiny shop, was driven there. Anyway it’s up in Bedfordshire
a bit of a drive from Deal 
What is it with computer guys who play with your mobo without even unpluging the thing. I’ve seen computer technicians get all alarmed when you touch a component without wearing a grounding bracelet, and then others who will hold a motherboard in their hand and turn it on (I’ve seen this, and am not making it up).
Anyway, it’s working now as long as I keep it on its side. There must be a loose conneciton on the mobo. It explains why it worked in the shop, because he had it on it’s side on the bench, and I had it standing up.
The motherboard is definitly unstable, I’ll look for one on ebay…
You just have to have some understanding of electricity, mainly DC electricity. Liquid (Sweat, humidity and coffee) on your hands is the main killer. Second IMO is the static that “Mr. North” popularized. Under a dry, moisture free environment there should be no problem.
In an air-conditioned room with dry hands I have done some crazy things to MOBOs. Anyone ever replaced RAM while a machine was on; I’ve done it successfully by accident, but don’t even think of it while in your right mind, ever.
I saw someone change a graphics card while his machine was “hot”, took out the old one and it was fine, stuck in his new cool one and it fried it to bits. On the other hand you also get the random PC guys who seem like they’ve just woken up out of a 5 year coma, turn off the computer before switching USB devices.
When I was having my notebook serviced, the first guy that came laid out an anti-static pad, handled everything real carefully (correct size screwdriver for each screw etc.), and placed each extracted component on another “special pad” for that purpose. Then a few days later when they sent someone else out, he just forced each screw out, wouldn’t bother turning the thing off before taking it apart, no special “pads”, chucked each component across the desk as he removed them.. and so on.. I later find out that this guy is their “head technician”
Survey - What’s preferred? The overly cautious technician, or the one who most likely knows more and has more experience, but is careless (probably because he knows it won’t affect anything - at least it hasn’t so far, and, oops, it did that time!)?
Bang went another comment spammer!