laptop repair - take two!

that's a photo of the new "motherboard" as it's about be installed in my laptop. right next to it is the old "new" motherboard that was installed last thursday night. that original repair was intended to fix my laptop's video card, which crashed and left me with a blank screen! thursday night i had a working laptop for just over 15 minutes before the computer crashed again - this time because it seemingly overheated. the error message indicated the fan may have failed!!

despite the overheating shut-off and subsequent error message to check the fan, dell decided to send out a new motherboard to replace the one it had just installed! it went out on friday, was delivered to the technician this morning, and he brought it over and installed it today. whatever incompatibility problem existed between board one and my old fan, the new board seems to have taken to the old fan (or vice versa?) beautifully! the laptop has been up and running for a few hours now. phew!

hopefully, this will be the first - and last - post about laptop operating problems :D
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update: wow, the second repair lasted for only a few hours before the computer crashed again! technically, that's an improvement over the 15 minutes it lived after the first repair! arrrgh!! another computer surgery around the corner :(