And don’t worry, it survived! *grin*

See, I’ve nothing more to add to my MangaFox Ripper at the moment, and I was getting terribly bored. In the meanwhile, my dear laptop was acting up. It refused to print letters when I typed them, throwing tantrums when I worked for too long by shutting down automatically. And then there was the matter of those silica balls that had entered into the system from my bag during my trip to Deegha last year. Those tiny li’l balls have been screwing me over for all these months and this morning I snapped. So I snuck in some of dad’s repairing gear and got to work.

I gotta say, it was the hardware workshop I’d attended in my first year that gave me this (false?) confidence. I had, somehow, forgotten that it’s been three years since then and any tinkering I’ve done is with desktops, never my laptop. (Though I did remove one silica ball from my memory card slot by blasting it to pieces since it just refused to budge. That was bold, now that I think back…)

So what is with these silica balls and why am I trying to be a superhero all by myself? I have my reasons.

1. My laptop’s warranty is long gone. In fact, it’s been 10 months since the 1-year warranty died, and I refused to extend it. That refusal comes because
2. These balls entered in that 1-yr warranty period. And when I took it to my HP Customer Care centre, they refused to do anything because it wasn’t showing any hardware problems.

No hardware problems, you say? I’ll show you hardware problems.

Those silica balls have been leading my laptop to make all sorts of weird, crackling sounds that scare the hell out of me. And the sounds aren’t what’s scary; 15 secs after the sounds start, my laptop enters into its lovely BSOD mode. Seriously? After the Blue Screen Of Death laughed at me for 5 times continuously I took my laptop down to the Customer Care centre. But, as my luck would have it, the silica balls had cleverly concealed themselves by then and thus my laptop started up without hitches. No hardware problems indeed.

“At least take the one in my memory slot out,” I insisted. The Customer Care guy scratched his head and took a look at the narrow crevice and shrugged.

“Sorry, we are not equipped with handling this problem.”

Wow, that was something, wasn’t it? So there was no way in hell I was going to extend my warranty and pay those fools a few more thousand bucks while they did nada. In fact I got so pissed I took a torch and a pair of forceps and tried to extract that silica ball that very day. And when it refused to come out, I borrowed my brother’s divider and smashed it into pieces. My logic – with the ball lodged in, it wasn’t as if I could use that slot anyway, so I had nothing to lose. Never underestimate a pissed woman.

But even then I hadn’t dared to open the laptop’s panels. C’mon, the Customer Care guys are wily… I out one toe out of line and they would have voided my warranty. So days and months passed by, and in the meanwhile whenever the laptop started crackling I would smack my laptop really hard and make the balls move elsewhere to make that crackling stop (and earn extremely curious and weird looks from people around me 😀 ). My warranty died last November, and I’d gotten used to the hit-when-crackles pattern.

Last night it started crackling and no matter how I hit it, the crackling didn’t stop. So before going to bed I resolved – I have to fix this in the morning. So this morning, I tried.

Why do laptops have to have so many screws anyway? I was prepared though, and took out (unnecessarily) many screws. Did a bit of cleaning, shaking, banging. Ultimately, I’m proud to say that I managed to get one ball out. I’m afraid, however, that at least one another remains within.

So right now, my keyboard’s working perfectly. I cleaned the vents so the system shouldn’t overheat as quickly. And I’m gonna wait for further crackling sounds to know for certain whether or not a silica ball remains.

And right now, I really feel like a computer genius! 😀