System restore

No posts for a couple of days due to sundry hardware problems, which led to problems booting up. When it did boot up, the machine then became liable to a system crash with the screen going to blackness in a silent poof.

It didn't feel like a hard drive failure. May be the RAM chips? Intel processor? Motherboard? Graphics card? Sound card? Running various diagnostics didn't unearth much in the way of clues.

If in doubt, turn off the machine, unplug it, walk away. Return during day-light hours.

First things first. Reseat the graphics and sound cards. Well, that solved the boot up problem and system crash. But now no sound.

If in doubt, turn off the machine, unplug it, walk away. Return during day-light hours. Reseat the sound card. No sound. Reseat the sound card. No sound. Consider going into town and buy a new sound card. Turn off the machine, unplug it. walk away. Return during day-light hours. Reseat the sound card.

Hey presto! Words and music restored. For the time being. Fingers crossed, et cetera. Although Windows XP no longer wants to Hibernate when so ordered.