YES!!!!!!!!!!!! I have a desktop again.

It's not yet really usable because it's patching its ever-loving little heart out, but it has its own C drive, all three of my drives, and everything else in and supposedly running. It may need a graphics card to run WoW, we are going to check on that when it's installed, but otherwise it's good. It's a nice little box.

Technically it has two open slots for drives. Non-technically, it would lead to things overheating. OTOH, it has one drive I can sacrifice if I want to add another drive later (it has a DVD-writer and a DVD-rom; I'd happily eject the latter if I needed the slot).

It is on the network, working, happy as a clam. Now there's just tons of installs. And all three drives came up fine. Scott has a theory. The drive that they said "failed" was the one with WoW on it. And in order to get it to work the first time, he had to make settings in the Bios to tell it about the drive and its size - it didn't detect it on its own. So we're betting the problem lay, not with the drive, but with the Bios possibly not having those settings still (maybe due to work Fry's did, maybe due to the power-fry that took out the video card also). The drive came up in this computer with no fussing.

Way, way too much money and stress, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel and - wonder of wonders! - I don't think it's a train! :) (After all, I don't play EQ any more, just WoW.)

...hopefully I am done now. Hopefully.

My monitor has been much too dark for a while, but I've been limping by. However, it's even worse with the new computer. Like, to unusable-with-WoW levels, which is not acceptable in my WoW box. :P

New monitor. I am glad I spent most of this year being good and saving most of my budgeted 'me money' because I was thinking some form of expensive techie toy would be cool. It meant I could replace the computer when it died without wincing at the budget too much. And the monitor. But, ow! Also, sheesh. :P (And yes, I winced. I'm sorry, new computer + new monitor = wince.)

There are still some fussy bits that need work, but...not too bad.