My Dell Dimension 8100 is dead or perhaps only mostly dead. I will see later this week if $400 of parts will revive it. After two wizard sessions that were inconclusive, two chat conversations with two technicians , the diagnosis is now the power supply AND the motherboard are both bad. The initial diagnosis was the disk drive was bad. I had one in another Dell System so I tried that one and the symptoms were the same. I am glad that I did not go out and buy one. The parts are ordered and should be arriving by Thursday.
The dead computer is especially annoying because I was planning on using some of my vacation time to try out the latest version of X3NavalD, a drawing program for small boats that you can get a copy of from Sourceforge. It is simple and perhaps a little bit hard to use. I need to try to use it to see if I can improve its usability. Presently you need a large screen and a slow mouse as the slightest false move can change a buildable boat into one that is impossible. The other slight problem is that the labels are presently in French but the author is working on that.