Okay, I goofed. Tried to download something I shouldn't have. Ended up swimming in malware soup.
Spent about six hours doing restorative work on my laptop. All is back in order now, except the Chrome browser is now prone to outbursts of flickering. Firefox seems okay. Short story, I'm reacquainting with Firefox.
Meanwhile, in the desktop department, my just over two-year-old Dell desktop died. Bought Dell, and a higher grade desktop, in 2013 thinking it would give years and years of service. Big disappointment.
I've got an eMachines unit from a decade ago that, while crappy slow and running an obsolete Windows version, keeps chugging on.
Looking like the Dell failure is either a power supply or the motherboard. Do I dare buy a new supply to test the theory? A new motherboard probably not worth the effort. I will begin efforts to lift programs and data off the hard drive later today. Maybe I just put pertinent data on the laptop, if it seems stable enough (laptop's less than a year old), and let the desktop sit awaiting deeper assessment.
One potential course of action: Watch eBay for the same or similar desktop model as a used or off-lease special. Working, of course. If one's found cheap enough, I could swap in my existing hard drive, and/or use the replacement computer as a test platform to check out, one by one, components from the Dell that's failed.
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