While surfing the internet with my “lab rat hat” on, I came across various articles and videos on “How To Build An Oil Cooled PC”.  I thought to myself, OMG seriously?

Apparently, not only to hardware gearheads do this, but they sell these pre-made PCs online.

They also offer DIY computer kits for the adventurous ones out there.

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So, you may ask, how is this aberration of nature possible?  Well mineral oil is non-conductive.  It is actually possible – though potntially mind-bending – to submerge your PCs shinny parts into mineral oil (cleanest option).  Though I doubt I’ll even be moved to attempt this myself, I do find it strangely interesting. 

Here are a few brief videos on hard-core enthusiasts at work!

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:the End :: :: swytch ::

I’m sure many of you have encountered this devlish BSOD (blue screen of death) at least once in your lifetime.

In my line of work, people tend to come to me in utter anguish praying they haven’t lost their files. Most of the time I can get the user up and running again within a short period of time but there are those times…. well, I’ll just re-emphasize the need to BACK UP YOUR DATA. :0)

Here are a few steps which I used to get my laptop back in shape. (steps below reference Windows XP but can be help troubleshooting other operating systems)

Step 1 – Located my Windows XP operating system disk. With my XP disk in the CD-rom drive, I powered up the computer. When prompted, I booted to the CD drive and not the internal hard drive. At that point I began to see XP starting its boot and restore process.

Step 2 – When prompted, select “R” to repair the current XP installation. You will then be brought to the Windows System Repair prompt shown below.

Step 3 – I resolved the situation using both the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands.

original photo: http://www.windowsnetworking.com

I ran the FIXBOOT command first, then rebooted the machine to see if it solved the problem. It didn’t so I proceeded with the FIXMBR command and tested again.

Step 4 – I returned to the Windows Recovery Console and ran the chkdsk command with a ” /r ” for recover.

After I completed the steps above, I performed a full shutdown.
I booted the laptop and we were back in action! These are the steps that I took but know that there are many more commands you can use in the Windows Recovery Console.

Check out some of these sources for additional information:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297185
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Windows-Recovery-Console-from-XP-CD
http://commandwindows.com/recovery.htm