I was just getting to aikido tonight when purplejavatroll  sent me a text message saying the magic smoke had escaped some part of her computer system.  I phoned and she said she'd unplugged everything (including power cables) and wasn't sure exactly what had gone wrong.

I should probably mention that I bought her a slightly better video card on the weekend and installed it Monday night.  That seemed like a possible culprit.  There'd been a pop noise, the monitor went wonky (suddenly wider display), her system froze and wouldn't shutdown, and, oh yes, the smell of hot electronics.

At home, I took the case apart and failed to find any evidence of smoke having left the components on the motherboard, video card, or other internals.  So, I plugged it all back together and started the machine.  Her monitor was definitely not displaying correctly and adjusting the width of the screen resulted in the left side looking stretched while the right side looked squished (a fairly serious problem).  And then the smell again.  No obvious smell from the computer, so I turned off the monitor and unplugged it.  I tested her system out with my LCD monitor (no problems -- although it did complain about running in an unsupported mode at first).  I switched display modes and refresh rates up and down (from 800x600 to 1280x1024 refreshing at 60Hz through 85Hz) without any problems.

I think that tomorrow, before we go to puppytown 's gathering, we'll hit Costco quickly (a few other things we need, too) and look at LCD monitors.  If we can't find anything we're happy with there, we might try Staples near our place or even plan to go shopping on Friday.


Anyway, the upshot here is that purplejavatroll  is temporarily incommunicado.  She promises to read e-mail and post to LJ real soon.