Resurrection? Maybe, Maybe Not

wtf ?    I thought this was supposed to be a blog about film photography.

 I tipped over my old Dell desktop computer on its side so I could take off the side panel.  I could not see any obvious reason why it would not boot up, so I replaced the panel, plugged it in and pressed the Start button.  The computer started up normally.  

 I moved the computer back to its place on my desk, hooked up monitor and keyboard and pressed the Start button again.  The cooling fans roared for about five seconds and then everything went quiet.   Another four or five tries produced the same result, leaving me again without access to Photoshop CS2 and the Silverfast scanning program which runs my old Epson flatbed.

Acquiring a copy of CS5 that would run on my IMAC provided a considerable improvement over GIMP for photo editing on the IMAC, but I was still left relying on VueScan, which I find to be much slower and unintuitive in use compared to Silverfast.  I was motivated to take one last stab at getting the old Dell to come back to life. 

I laid the computer over on its side again, plugged it in and pressed the Start button.  The fans and the hard drive came back to life along with the Windows XT splash screen.  I did a test scan with Silverfast and then did a software restart which worked fine.  At that point I was tempted to just leave the Dell running, but that just seems too wasteful.  So I am shutting it down and we'll see what tomorrow brings.

* * *

  Thursday Morning:  I attached the power cord to the back of the Dell and then pressed the Start button on the front panel.The computer made a low moaning sound and went silent.  I'll probably try a few more times to get it going today  Looks like a nice day coming up.  The sun is out.  No wind.  I still have half a roll of Kentmere to shoot in the Pentax ME.

 Thursday Night (6 PM):

Back in business.  It seems to matter how I plug in the power cable and how I press the Start button.  This time I first connected the power cable to the back of the computer.  Then I plugged the cable into the power strip and immediately pressed the Start button briefly.  Not sure if this is evidence of some short circuit, or some other issue.